Holi season is adulteration time

Allahabad: With the festival of colours just round the corner, it is also the time for mouth-watering sweets and hence, their adulteration.
Khoya and Paneer remain the most commonly adulterated food items. It is not only the end products, like sweets, or savoury mixtures, papads, food colours etc, which could be adulterated but even the raw materials.
The food and drug control department has been conducting drives to seize adulterated food. On Tuesday last, over 350 kilos of khoya was seized from a cold storage of Phaphamau.
Refined palm stearin, a non-edible by-product of crude palm oil, is used as an adulterant in vanaspati. Khoya is prepared by mashing blotting paper and toilet paper in milk and synthetic khoya is prepared by adding urea.
Likewise, semolina is used to make synthetic milk. Hari Mohan Srivastava, a senior officer at the food and drug control department, said, "People should try to buy whole spices and grind them at home or purchase packed spices with certification from FPO, ISI or AGMARK."