Please Ensure Us Quality Food

Who ensures the quality of the food which we eat? The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has taken a tremendous step in this regard, but the actual onus lies on the state government to ensure quality food.

In Odisha, we have a Food Commisionerate and of course Food Safety Officers. But can they with confidence say that they have taken adequate steps to ensure that quality food is provided to the people of Odisha?

Our diet diversity has changed during the last 20 years: there has been high intake of refined food, saturated and trans fatty acids, salt and sugar, leading to increased risk of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and growth problems. Overweight individuals have developed insulin resistance and cardiovascular diseases at a younger age, leading to high premature disability and death.

In this scenario, nutrition information through different communicating mediums (one of them – labelling) on food is important. It’s not due to varying levels of literacy, but because consumers tend not to pay attention, or pay inadequate attention, to the label. A visual label — like a star-rating system — therefore makes eminent sense. It overcomes several barriers inherent to written messages and warnings, although. One has seen manufacturers and marketers finding ways to dodge the mandatory FSSAI requirement; as in the case of gutka. Thus any star-rating system must meet five criteria.

To catch the buyers’ attention, everything should appear on the front of the pack along with the brand and product name. For the hurried buyers, a colour coding system can help quite a bit. For instance, a ‘signal’ with red can indicate ‘not good for health’, yellow ‘within tolerable limits’ and green could indicate ‘healthy’.

Another way is through star colour coding which should be below the brand’s name on the front of the pack (the warning on cigarette packets is a good model to follow). Before implementing such a coding, the FSSAI should do a scientific field test across the country with various socio-economic groups.

Moreover, FSSAI should conduct periodic surveys to investigate the effectiveness of the labelling system and design appropriate campaigns to educate consumers. It should not only pertain to nutrition info on the label but also other aspects of the food chain from farm to plate.

On this, I would like to take everyone through the bread making process, which will surely help one to easily comprehend the quality of bread which we are consuming specially in the state vis-a-vis Bhubaneswar. These are personally my take as a food auditor and after interacting with numerous bakers and outlets in the last one year.

Bread consists of only three major ingredients: flour, water and yeast. Flour is the most important ingredient; the cereals are taken to the mill, which begins to strip the grain of the shell. Flour ground from stone mills are preferred for making bread because it is more nutritious and balanced.

With industrialisation, the evolution of the techniques and the demand in the field of bread, has constantly improved to make an easy process for bread manufacturing in the last 50-60 years, which is when white bread was introduced. For a long time it was believed that the best way was to obtain flour as white as possible, because it was noticed while baking it that the resulting bread became more voluminous. In order to obtain flour of different qualities, the process of refining (or sifting), sieving and gradual elimination of bran and germ from the flour, was invented. Incidentally, the more it is refined, the colour becomes white(r) and has less of nutrition.

Another important factor in bread is leavening. Well-leavened bread is beautiful and a soft product; A good leavening is the result of many factors, starting from the expert hands of the baker, how they treat it while making the dough in the machine, the resting and baking time, as well as the yeast used — the best ones are from natural yeast and sourdough.

The main role, however, is played by the ability of the dough to form the glutinous mesh, that is, the structure that retains the leavening gas and gives bread it’s swelling; 80% of this process depends on the variety of flour used. Higher the gluten percentage, the bread/loaf will be more voluminous and swollen.

So to choose a good and genuine loaf of bread, follow these thumb rules:

Read the label and list of ingredients: look for the terms “wholemeal” and “with germ” to get as many precious nutrients as possible. Beware instead of the terms like “enriched wheat flour” or “multi-cereal”, which do not necessarily indicate that the flour used is wholemeal and not been refined.

Look at the bread crumbs on the table while you take a bite. Do you notice whitish crumbs? Better to avoid it, this rhyme with a total absence of taste. Cream-coloured reveals the dough has been worked at low speed and not hurried. Finally, if the alveoli in breadcrumbs are regular, it is a bad sign, once again proof of haphazard work.

The scent: like a good wine, you can feel the aroma of good bread. Rely on your nose then. First, the crust can exalt more or less roasted aromas and hints of liquorice, coffee, wood, which are released depending on the method of production and baking. As for the crumb, its scent can be sweet or more acidic, depending on the yeast. A slight fruity scent is a good sign: it indicates the use of good baker’s yeast.

Shape and volume: volume is also an essential point. More the gluten the, the more it swells and airy and therefore the bread is tasteless. We therefore prefer thicker breads, synonymous with slower production and less refined flours — the whole wheat ones. If the brown bread swells up then caramelised agents are used.

The crust: its formation is linked to the ingredients but also to the cooking process, which causes the browning of the sugars and therefore the colouring. Dense, dark (not black), fragrant and crisp are guarantees of taste.

Thus the next time you buy a loaf of bread, correlate every point which has been detailed out. A question, however, will definitely arise: is the concerned department of the government taking note of this and ensuring quality?