Food Quality Magazine
ISSUE 04 | OCTOBER 2015
How Safe is the Food we Eat?
Dr. Anita Joshi, MarketsandMarkets
Times were when we didn’t think
twice about what food we ate!
Recent times, however, are showing
that big brands have been entering
big controversies. So much is in the
news and all for the wrong reasons.
It raises the pertinent -question…..
how safe is the food we eat?
Food is close to every individual’s
heart and is actually a culture of the
society. It is the very basic necessity
of life. Several factors such as food
trade and its globalization, transportation of foods, changing trends,
tastes and eating habits along with seasonality of foods have paved
the path for Food Preservation and
Processing Technologies. On the
other hand, foodborne illnesses arise mainly from contamination of food resulting from improper handling
and processing, under-cooking, or
improper storage of food. Therefore,
food has a limited shelf life and needs to be processed, preserved and
protected.
The need for increasing the shelf life
of food proved to be one of the major
drivers of rapid developments in the
Food Processing Industry. There are
constantly evolving technologies
involving chemical processes or
physical processes catering to the
changing trends and requirements.
Novel Food Additives are needed to
improve and provide better flavors
or colors, to improve texture, to
compensate for nutrition, and other
properties of foods. A whole body
of research looks at these various
aspects of Food Technology and the
market for Food additives having different functions is growing steadily
(egs. colors, texturizers, flavors, etc.
For details see Markets and Markets
reports on Food Additives).
Added to this is the fast pace of life
resulting from increasing industrialization and more and more women
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entering the work force leading to
lesser and lesser times for conventional cooking. This has further fuelled
the need for processing food, for
convenience foods and the readyto-cook and ready-to-eat varieties.
There is a steep rise in consumption
of bakery products, confectionery
products and fried foods in the developed economies and the developing
economies are not far behind often
proving to be the emerging, better
markets.
However, it is certain that irrespective
of these growing needs of modern
times, there can be no trade-off
between technology and safety. On
the flip side, these technologies may
actually result in depleting the food
of essential nutrients like vitamins
and proteins on one hand and adding unwanted, unhealthy contaminants on the other.
So, what are the common contaminants of food? Microbial pathogens
such as bacteria like E. coli,
Campylobacter, Listeria, SalmonellaShigella, some fungi like Candida,
Aspergillus, viruses, GMOs, environmental toxins, food allergens and
adulterants, residues of drugs and
agricultural chemicals are all the
most commonly found food contaminants, introduced into food due
to processing and handling.
WHO statistics show that there are
as many as 200 different diseases
that can spread due to unsafe food.
Food borne and water borne diarrheal diseases kill an estimated 2 million
people every year. Chemicals, heavy
metals and toxins which contaminate food can cause long term illnesses
such as Cancer and neurological diseases. Several outbreaks of food
borne illnesses and poisoning have
continued to occur over the years.
Undoubtedly, safety of food is a primary public health concern across
the world. (Ref- http://www.who.
int/features/factfiles/food_safety/
facts/en/index8.html).
The result is that every country now
has formulated strict regulations for
the safety and quality of food. These
norms are becoming increasingly
stringent and are being enforced
in every country across the globe.
In addition, the awareness of the
importance of food safety and concern is increasing in the consumers
themselves thereby propelling the
demand for safe and tested food.
This brings us to the question, how
can food safety be tested and how
can it be maintained? Firstly, as per
the WHO, to improve food safety,
a multitude of different professionals need to work together, making
use of the best available science
and technologies. Different governmental departments and agencies,
encompassing public health, agriculture, education and trade, need to
collaborate and communicate with
each other and engage with the civil
society including consumer groups
(ref. http://www.who.int/features/
factfiles/food_safety/facts/en/index8.html).
Secondly, several Food Safety Testing
technologies are available which
help evaluate food right through the
value chain through all the processes
of food processing, to its packaging,
storage and distribution/transportation. Testing is needed for everything from raw materials in used
food preparation to the finished
product, to storage and distribution facilities. A foodborne outbreak
indicates that the food processing
system has been compromised and
needs improvement.
The markets for these testing technologies have in fact been growing
steadi K