Food fraud: A menace to public health

Food is a basic requirement of people that helps in providing proper nutrition and energy for growth and repair of tissues. However, food which provides numerous health benefits now comes in adulterated form. Some of the most frequent products to be fraudulent are common to many households – olive oil, cheese, honey, herbs and spices etc. The greed of industries to gain higher profits within short period of time makes them to indulge in malpractices such as food fraud and involves such techniques for food fraud which go undetected even after using laboratory techniques. There are manifold analytical techniques to detect food fraud in laboratory but consumers are not able to detect it at home scale. Moreover, no one bothers to do that after buying it. Consuming a fraudulated food product can prove harmful for human body as it may have short term or long-term effects. It is only consumer awareness that can protect them from food fraud. The purpose of this review is to study the food fraud that is deliberately affecting the health of consumers.