To avoid the economic loss incurred by the spoilage of climacteric fruits during the harvest, processing, and transportation process, the fruit sellers pluck the fruits much before they attain proper maturity and use chemicals to ripen them artificially just before retailing. The necessity for artificial ripening also arises if the fruit sellers wish to sell fruits before their due season to make additional profit. Ethylene, ethanol, methanol, propylene, methyl jasmonate, ethylene glycol, ethephon, and calcium carbide are used to ripen fruits and vegetables artificially.
Gibberellic acid, alpha naphthyl acetic acid, and oxytocin are growth hormones used on fruits and vegetables by farmers to trigger growth. Oxytocin, being a mammalian hormone and a veterinary drug, is not suitable for vegetable crops. However, it is widely used in bottle gourds, bitter gourds, pumpkins, and cucumbers to enhance size and color.
Sweetness of food is an important criterion in terms of demand and marketability. So, there is always a tendency by the traders to increase the sweetness of selected food items by artificial means. Mainly, fruits and vegetables, beverages, sweeteners, and confectionary products fall into sweet food category.
Artificial sweeteners are injected by injector pumps on one side of fruit to alter the natural sweetness. To ensure uniform distribution, sellers inject sweeteners from several points in the fruit. Saccharine mixture was found to be injected into melons and watermelons to enhance sweetness artificially. The addition of external sugar or sugar solution is a common form of adulteration of fruit juice. In the case of export purpose, the concentrated fruit juice is shipped; later, external water and sugar are added to the concentrated fruit juice to give natural properties similar to that of natural juice. In addition, high-fructose corn syrup, partially hydrolyzed cane syrup, and beet medium invert sugar are also added to increase the Brix value and to improve composition quite similar to authentic juice. The direct addition of sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, beet sugar, corn sugar, and cane sugar in honey is widely practiced. Adulteration of honey and confectionary products with fructose or glucose changes the fructose-to-glucose ratio. Feeding honeybees with syrups and industrial sugars after the broods have been naturally available is known as an indirect form of adulteration which is very difficult to detect. Feeding low quality honey to honeybees is also reported. Different confectionary and bakery products are sweetened with Acesulfame-K and Aspartame. Sugar, coloring agents, synthetic red dyes, aromatizing agents, and sweeter foreign wines are often added into wine for quality enhancement purpose. Glycerol reduces the acidity and bitter taste, increases the sweetness, and stops fermentation, while diethylene glycol imparts relish to wines. The addition of root or cane sugar to tequila and the addition of cane or beet ethanol to whiskey have also been noted.
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