The luscious colour of your favourite kamalabhog could be all due to metanil yellow dye, a non-permissible toxic colorant; the dazzling white of the rabri at your pet mithai shop from ultramarine blue; the milk your child drinks a combination of urea, liquid detergent, sugar, vegetable oil and water.

Scary, but true. More and more Calcuttans are falling prey to chronic stomach ailments and other serious metabolism-related disorders, and doctors believe rampant adulteration of food products has a lot to do with it.

“Almost 90 per cent of the gastrointestinal tract disturbances we treat in our daily practice can be traced to vendor-linked or outsourced food where adulteration and contamination are widespread. Over a long period of time, these chronic problems could even progress to cancers of the GI tract,” warns internal medicine specialist Milan Chhetri.

Machinations by unscrupulous traders, who add baser substances and/or remove vital elements from food products to inflate profit margins, means we may be ingesting dangerous dyes, sawdust, soapstone, industrial starch, aluminium foil and— believe it or not — even horse dung with our food at times.

Police are aware of the peril posed to the consumer. “We have a dedicated food section, which acts promptly on complaints, once the veracity is ascertained. Our duty is to nab the culprits and forward them to court, after which it’s the discretion of the sitting judge as to the punishment meted out,” says an official of the enforcement branch.

Lead chromate, an extremely toxic chemical, is often used to enrich the yellow colour of turmeric powder and also adds to its weight. “Yes, it’s a genuine threat and can lead to anaemia, paralysis and even mental retardation,” observes nutritionally-oriented physician Pritpal Singh, who advises households to avoid loose powdered spices and buy whole spices instead.

Except flour or rice powder, all other adulterants are hazardous to health and cause “irreparable damage” to the system when eaten at regular intervals over a long period of time. Singh cautions that the metanil yellow dye used to colour besan, pulses, amriti, laddoos, dalmoth, papad and sometimes biryani, could even cause liver cancer.

Certified and packaged food colours are available in the market, but being costlier, traders often substitute them with cheap and non-permissible dyes and colours, doctors lament.

Besides, dried seeds of volatile oil are added to cloves, soapstone or clay mixed with hing, sand, earth and common salt added to all flours and washing soda to table salt, warn nutrition experts.

Mustard oil also comes under the scanner for often being mixed with rapeseed oil. “Argemone, which grows in the wild with rapeseed, can act as a natural contaminant. Besides, some unscrupulous traders are known to mix non-edible oils, including castor oil and automobile lubricants,” observes Singh.

He advocates tinned or packed food items on which “proper informative labels are displayed” and advises against buying loose edible items from the market, to “reduce the total additive effect” of adulteration and contamination. Chhetri stresses on home-cooked food and either boiling drinking water or using “advanced purification technology”.

Be it aluminium foil in sweets instead of silver foil, washing powder in ice-cream or brick dust in red chilli powder, the fallout of adulterated food has alarmed doctors all around. And with incidences of cancer and neurological disorders steadily on the rise, consumers must be careful about even the most casual round of shopping.