With the festival of colours round the corner, markets of Garhwa abuzz with hectic activity, it’s also time for mouthwatering sweets, the demand, sale and purchase of which has witnessed a sudden surge.
Khoya (thickened milk) is consumed in the highest quantities in the variety of sweets so it is mostly adulterated during the festive season. Refined palm stearin, a non-edible by-product of crude palm oil, is used as an adulterant in vanaspati. Stearin is largely used to manufacture soaps. Khoya is prepared by mashing blotting paper and toilet paper in milk and synthetic khoya is adulterated with urea. One should buy Khoya and other sweets only from genuine places, says a customer.
Markets will soon be flooded with all kinds of sweets prepared in bulk and to cope up with the demand, oil and khoya, used for preparing these sweets, is highly adulterated as poisonous argemone and yellow dye is added to the oil. “Semolina is another important ingredient used to make synthetic milk and often milk-cake, you pay around Rs 250 per kilo for, contains no milk at all,” said a shopkeeper of the town.