ADULTERATION

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act 2888) states that food is "adulterated" if it meets any one of the following criteria:

Food also meets the definition of adulteration if:

Further, food is considered adulterated if:

AVAILABLE METHODS FOR DETECTING ADULTERATION

Milk: Add a drop or two of iodine solution to a few drops of milk. If the solution turns blue then, it contains starch (which is used to give it a thick, rich texture).

Butter/ghee: Take small amount of ghee or butter in test-tube and heat it up. Take a small amount of sugar and dissolve it in 10 ml of hydrochloric acid (Hcl). Now, add the solution to the mixture of butter and ghee. If it turns red, then the ghee or butter is adulterated.

Mustard oil: Take small amount of mustard oil in a test-tube, add a few drops of nitric acid to it. Shake and heat the mixture for 2-3 minutes. Appearance of red colour indicates that argemone oil is added to mustard oil.

Turmeric powder, dals and pulses: Take a spoon of dal, turmeric or besan powder and let it dissolve in lukewarm water. Add a few drops of hydrochloric acid to it. If it turns pink, violet or purple, it shows that Metanil yellow is present in it.

Sugar: Take a spoon of sugar, dissolve it in water and allow it to settle. While sugar will dissolve in water, chalk will not and thus will remain as residue at the bottom.

Effects of Adulteration
 It is injurious to health.
 It causes many diseases.
 It also causes deficiency diseases as it...

PROPOSED SOLUTION

This "AI based adulteration detector" device consists of a micro-controller, a camera module and power supply. The OS must be programmed in a such a way that it must start image processing as soon as the device is powered up. The High Definition (HD) pictures of original and pure substances are obtained and their characteristics & properties are analysed and these data are stored in the SD card of Raspberry Pi. The pictures of test samples are then captured through an camera module attached to that of Raspberry Pi. Several filters are applied to the test sample because various filters can reveal various properties such as optical property, density, texture, size, color, pattern of the substance. This is then compared with that of the pure sample substance and its properties, characteristics are then studied. Based upon these results the amount of food substance that has been adulterated and their ratio of purity to that of adulterated substance can be easily found out. This technique implies to all types of food substances since every food substance has one or more unique property that could be easily distinguished.