Taking it with a pinch of salt!

Your favourite anytime meal Maggi goes off the shelves for containing high amounts of lead. You are wary of giving your little one baby food because that too is probably not free from hazard. As concerns over food safety violations rise, one is compelled to take a look at what’s on the plate and whether it’s fit for consumption.

Even the fruits and vegetables in your fridge basket may not be fully devoid of pesticides and you may have to do some thorough cleansing before consuming these. Besides, stringent measures need to be in place to see that these are cultivated using the best practices that make them as risk-free as possible. 

Homemaker Jaya Agarwal makes it a point to adequately clean the routine stock that she purchases from Hopcoms. She says, “I normally immerse vegetables in plain water for 15-20 minutes before washing them. For leafy vegetables and fruits like grapes that supposedly contain maximum pesticides, I use salt water. This also helps in getting rid of the wax coating on apples.”

Thorough cleansing is a must and most buyers follow strict cleansing methods in their kitchens, no matter where they purchase their supplies from. However, few prefer to stick to certain sellers who they feel are a trusted name and have maintained their quality over time.

“For leafy greens like coriander, spinach and fenugreek that come into direct contact with pesticides and also tomatoes, I prefer to go to a store, where am assured of good quality. As for potatoes and onions, which are peeled anyway, I pick them up wherever convenient. But washing them is a must,” says Rajshree Khandelwal, a resident of JP Nagar.

Madhu Chouhan, who also lives in the same area, picks up her vegetables from the nearest Hopcoms, which she feels has a fresh, quality stock that is also reasonably priced. “I mostly visit Hopcoms but occasionally, if something is not of a good quality there, I buy it somewhere else”, says Madhu.

Meanwhile, some people have also considered the idea of switching to organic vegetables but discarded it soon after due to their inaffordability. Explains homemaker Bharti Jain, “Sometime back, when my sister was sick and was staying with us, we started purchasing organic vegetables. The taste is certainly different but they are almost three times the price of normal vegetables and can’t be consumed on a daily basis. We just buy our everyday vegetables from the most reliable source and consume them with a pinch of salt! However, I take care to first soak them in either pesticide removing liquid mixed with water or salt water. After that, they are properly rinsed and placed in the fridge.”

But even though consumers may take appropriate measures to prevent the intake of pesticides in their food, they come into the picture only later. Food safety depends on where the sellers have sourced their fruit and vegetable supplies from to a large extent. Diwakar, category manager at Market Place Gourmet Food by Food World (MG Road), says, “We are associated with suppliers who we know are associated with farmers following good farming practices. Officials from agri-input companies often make field visits and conduct training sessions where they advise these farmers on the type and quantity of pesticides to be used for a particular crop as per the season. Once the produce is received at the distribution centre, it is checked for physical and chemical defects; the sorting and grading is done by a team of agri graduates. Sometimes, we also visit the farms personally to look into the farming practices.”

Stores like Reliance Fresh and Hopcoms, which source directly from farmers, also claim to focus on farmer training and quality checks to maintain food safety standards.  An official of Reliance Fresh says, “We source our supplies from a set of registered farmers who have been trained with us for six to eight years now.”

At Hopcoms too, which has more than 16,000 farmers as its members, the farmers are advised on the permissible limit for pesticides and the produce is adequately sorted and graded. “We can distinguish the good crop from the bad one just by looking at it. Also, nowadays farmers are quite wise. They know how much pesticide to use and that over usage can spoil the crop,” says Chandru, a salesman at Hopcoms, MG Road.

Whatever the case, make sure to buy only fruits and vegetables that are fresh and in season. And it would be only sensible to devote ample time cleaning before gorging those greens!
    
As KB Dundi, Joint Director, Horticulture Department indicates, “Whether it is organic produce that’s costlier or the regular one, we have no idea about what chemicals are being used at the farmer’s level. It’s always safer to soak it in salt water so that the chemicals are removed and then wash it thoroughly. This is something that every buyer must be particular about. As for farmers, it’s advisable to not spray any pesticides 15 days before the crop is harvested, else the residue is left behind.”