The festive spirit of Diwali is around the town and Indians living in the country and outside are equally excited and enthusiastic to celebrate the festival of lights with full frenzy. Diwali, besides being about lights, is also a day when friends and relatives exchange gifts and sweets and without traditional sweets or mithai.
Owing to this craze for traditional sweets, most of the sweet shops and halwais are packed with customers this time of the year. However, are you aware how the shopkeepers manage to cater to each and every customer?
You will find that many sweet shops compromise on the quality of the sweets being made through adulteration, in milk sweets, most often. The possible adulterants include chalk, urea, chemical whiteners, and soap in the milk used to make the sweets. The khoya that is used in barfi or other sweets could have paper or starch in it, and vark or the silver sheet on the sweets could actually be aluminium foil. The ghee used for any mithai could contain animal fat.
There are ways to check if the sweets you are buying or eating are safe for consumption.
- Most of the sweets have silver covering on them. The sweets sellers are, however, using aluminium foil in place of silver. To know if it pure, touch the sweet softly and if the covering comes on your finger, it would be fake.
- Smell or taste the sweets before buying them, if they smell musty and taste sour, they are stale.
- All milk products like paneer, khoya and milk are mixed with starch for the rich and thick texture of sweets. To check the purity, take a small sample of any of these products and put to boil. Once it cools, add two drops of iodine and if the sample turns blue after iodine addition, starch is present.
- If you want to check if milk has water, put a drop of it on a slanting polished surface, adulterated milk will flow immediately without any mark, while pure milk will flow slowly and leave a while mark on the surface.
- To check the ghee, pour a teaspoon of ghee in a pan. If the ghee immediately melts and turns darkish brown, then the ghee is pure, while if it takes time to melt and turns yellow, it is adulterated.