Sunday, August 06, 2006
Adulteration
Good morning,
Adulteration can be so Subtle !
When one sees a man peddling fresh milk, somehow adulteration comes to mind. This is because adulterating fresh milk is as easy as adding water, which is the process. Adulteration is the art of diluting a product with something cheaper and selling it for more gain. Movies from Bollyhood will remind us that this is still being done. Adulteration is tempting and easy to do. Coffee powder used to be adulterated with maize. Adulteration of fresh milk and coffee powder are well known and easy to detect. There are other types of adulteration which are subtle and escape notice easily. These processes use sugar or salt, yes, condiments which are common in the kitchen.
Long ago, when we drank our beverages we had to add milk and sugar. Then some smart marketeers premixed these with sugar, and we love it; it was handy and labour saving. Sugar is simply much cheaper, a fraction of the cost of the beverage itself; and that was not adulteration ! Over the years the percentage of sugar increased, and who cared.
Lets look at some seafood. There were those delicious little squids, the ones about two inches long, cooked in the kelongs and brought to the markets in the early morning. How tasty they were; one could eat a full meal of these alone. Nowadays, how many can one eat without getting dehydrated; they are almost as salty as the salted squids that are sold in bottles. And the tiny little one inch long silver fish that babies and toothless grandmothers love. One kilogram of silver fish costs more than $20, how much does salt cost ? Salt added to this fish becomes over $20 per kilogram. People with high blood pressure will know how much salt there is in these things when they partake them; they would thus not touch them.
It is right to say that adding sugar and salt is adulteration, but can it come to a prohibition ? There is no law against this right now, and this is spreading to many other products. And somehow more sugar or salt are being added to food that are costly; it is very easy to increase profit this way.
Have a nice day
Ronald
Adulteration can be so Subtle !
When one sees a man peddling fresh milk, somehow adulteration comes to mind. This is because adulterating fresh milk is as easy as adding water, which is the process. Adulteration is the art of diluting a product with something cheaper and selling it for more gain. Movies from Bollyhood will remind us that this is still being done. Adulteration is tempting and easy to do. Coffee powder used to be adulterated with maize. Adulteration of fresh milk and coffee powder are well known and easy to detect. There are other types of adulteration which are subtle and escape notice easily. These processes use sugar or salt, yes, condiments which are common in the kitchen.
Long ago, when we drank our beverages we had to add milk and sugar. Then some smart marketeers premixed these with sugar, and we love it; it was handy and labour saving. Sugar is simply much cheaper, a fraction of the cost of the beverage itself; and that was not adulteration ! Over the years the percentage of sugar increased, and who cared.
Lets look at some seafood. There were those delicious little squids, the ones about two inches long, cooked in the kelongs and brought to the markets in the early morning. How tasty they were; one could eat a full meal of these alone. Nowadays, how many can one eat without getting dehydrated; they are almost as salty as the salted squids that are sold in bottles. And the tiny little one inch long silver fish that babies and toothless grandmothers love. One kilogram of silver fish costs more than $20, how much does salt cost ? Salt added to this fish becomes over $20 per kilogram. People with high blood pressure will know how much salt there is in these things when they partake them; they would thus not touch them.
It is right to say that adding sugar and salt is adulteration, but can it come to a prohibition ? There is no law against this right now, and this is spreading to many other products. And somehow more sugar or salt are being added to food that are costly; it is very easy to increase profit this way.
Have a nice day
Ronald
# posted by chunmu @ 7:39 PM 
