Food Safety and Quality: Safe Handling, Preservation, Adulteration and the FSS Act
Safe food handling
The WHO Five Keys to Safer Food are: keep clean; separate raw and cooked food; cook thoroughly; keep food at safe temperatures; use safe water and raw materials. Bacteria multiply fastest in the danger zone of 5–60 °C, with the optimum near 37 °C, so cooked food should be held above 60 °C or chilled below 5 °C, and never left in the danger zone for more than two hours. Reheat thoroughly, and only once.
Preservation and adulteration
Preservation methods: drying, salting, sugaring, pickling, canning, freezing, irradiation and chemical preservatives. Pasteurisation uses 63 °C for 30 minutes (holder method) or 72 °C for 15 seconds (HTST); UHT uses 135–150 °C for 2–4 seconds with aseptic packaging. Common adulterants: water in milk, starch in milk powder, metanil yellow in turmeric, sawdust or husk in chilli powder, chalk powder in flour, non-permitted colours in sweets. Home tests: iodine solution turns blue-black with starch; a drop of pure milk on a slanting surface flows slowly, not like water.
Law and labels
The Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 created the FSSAI, which licenses food businesses, fixes standards and regulates labelling. A label must show the name of the food, ingredients in descending order of weight, net quantity, nutrition information, veg/non-veg mark, FSSAI licence number, batch number, date of manufacture, best before and storage instructions.
Worked example
A shop sells loose chilli powder that leaves a bright red stain on the hand and feels gritty when stirred in water. Reasoning: the red stain suggests a non-permitted dye such as rhodamine B, and the grit suggests sand or brick powder; both are adulterants under the FSS Act. The correct response is to avoid loose product without an FSSAI licence number and to report the matter to the food safety authority.
Traps
- Quoting the danger zone as 0–100 °C or 10–40 °C.
- Mixing up HTST and UHT temperatures.
- Listing ingredients without stating that they are ordered by weight.