DETECTION OF ADULTERATION IN COMMUNAL USED SPICE POWDER

(ASAFOETIDA) IN INDIA

Siddhartha Sachan , Anshul Sonaray , Soumya Rathore

Department of Food Technology, Harcourt Butler Technical University, East Campus, Kanpur-
208002,U.P.,India

ABSTRACT

Asafoetida is a perennial plant. It is inhabitant to central Asia, eastern Iran to Afghanistan.

However, Asafoetida is not an inhabitant of India. But it is used from ancient times in Indian
medicine and cookery as a spice. It is also used in folk phytomedicine since antiquity in
traditional medicine for the treatment of several neurological (paralysis), gastrointestinal
(stomach ache), respiratory (asthma) diseases. Nowadays adulteration is a common practice, it is
the addition of ingredients which are not permitted in food. They are added because of business
profit only. Adulterated foods are harmful for human health as they contain the unauthorized
food ingredients. Even Asafoetida is not untouched with this malpractice. It is adulterated with
soap stone, lead and foreign resins, which causes harmful effects on human body such as
dysentery, which is an intestinal inflammation. As there are many hazardous effects of
adulteration on human health, so it is an attempt to bring awareness to the public on the
important subject to food adulteration and various simple methods available to detect food
adulteration. The procedures/ tests to check adulterants are taken from well-known and widely
accepted publications like FSSAI.

Keywords: Asafoetida , Phytomedicine, Adulteration , FSSAI