Vol. 11, Special Issue 4 (2022)

Author(s):
PV Siddartha, A Jagadeesh Babu and T Madhava Rao

Abstract:
Several available sweets are being adulterated with artificial food colors and this study was aimed at evaluating the extent of adulteration in the milk-based sweets with respect to three synthetic colorants. Further, normal and UV-VIS spectrophotometer were compared for their efficiency in determining the color concentration. A total of 40 Milk based sweets from local shops were collected that were visually confirmed of color addition. Each sweet was taken in duplicate and the color was extracted by centrifugation and double filtration technique. Known artificial food color standards for Tartrazine, Fast Green FCF and Sunset Yellow were taken in known concentration gradient and standard curve was plotted. Further, the concentration of color was estimated based on the standard curve initially by normal spectrophotometer followed by a UV-VIS spectrophotometer. Among the sweets that were analyzed, Tartrazine was added in excess beyond the maximum permissible level with a mean 517mg/kg conc as per the UV-VIS results. Comparatively, UV-VIS spectrophotometry showed a better estimation efficiency with more turbid extracts that were erred in the normal spectrophotometer. Fast green FCF and Sunset Yellow were estimated to be below the MPL with a mean of 39.39mg/ml and 3.84mg/ml respectively. This paper offers an insight into the fate of local sweet shops where most of the sweets with colorant adulteration go unnoticed many a times. Further, other than the three color standards evaluated, many other synthetic colorants could also be estimated by other techniques of estimation in addition to this spectrophotometric evaluation.