KM Masum Billah

We are Bengalis, we are a nation of foodies. Fish, meat, fruits are our daily companions on the dining table. A variety of nutritious native fruits adorn our dining table. But we have to buy seasonal fruits with some apprehension. In order to catch the market quickly, to keep the fruit fresh for a long time or to ripen it quickly, various harmful chemicals including carbide are added to the fruit. Harmful chemicals are sprayed on the litchi to improve its color, carbide is added to ripen the banana faster.

And after mixing this carbide only within 10/12 hours the raw banana is taking yellow color and we are buying poison from the market thinking it is ripe banana. Mango is the most popular seasonal fruit. This seasonal fruit is a top favorite for everyone. But raw mango is mixed with calcium carbide, which is very harmful to the human body! These harmful chemicals are creating long-term physical problems for us!

If we calculate, from breakfast to dinner, how much poison-free food do we eat? We may never find a day when we can eat completely poison-free food. The issue of unsafe food in the country has come up again and again in various studies. "Poison" has entered our food chain for a class of profiteers. Even our favorite rice is adulterated! Most vegetables in the market are mixed with poison! Various chemicals are added to keep it fresh for a long time, and we are forced to buy it! Just as vegetables are not poison-free, fish and meat are adulterated! Fish market in formalin fish market! Many articles have been published on the harmful aspects of poultry feed or various farmed fish feeds. The residual effects of these feeds are causing long-term problems in our bodies! Toxic chromium from tannery effluents has also been found in poultry farm eggs in the past. The victims are ordinary people, but nothing stops there! And so it can be said that getting poison-free food is becoming difficult for us every day!

According to a research report of Paribesh Bachao Andolan (PABA), 3 lakh people are suffering from cancer, 2 lakh people are suffering from kidney disease, 1.5 lakh people are suffering from diabetes every year due to consumption of adulterated food. That is, day by day we are buying poison with money and pushing our future towards darkness.

The activities of some producers or traders for the sake of small profit are not only disappointing us, but also disrupting our normal life. Through various newspapers or electronic media, we see how the market of our daily products is spoiled by adulterated food! Harmful fabric dyes are mixed with various foods, especially baby food, brick powder is mixed with yellow pepper powder! In some anti-adulteration campaigns conducted by the Directorate of Consumer Protection, some famous expensive restaurants of the capital were caught mixing harmful chemicals with food. The mismanagement of these famous and expensive restaurants shakes our consciousness! If the image of these named restaurants is like this, then your body will stand up when you think about how the condition of other restaurants can be! So what are we eating in the name of delicious food by spending so much money?

Eating junk food has short and long term effects on our lifestyle. Since food is our basic need, and when this food is adulterated, it enters our body and has harmful effects. According to experts, people can suffer from 12 to 15 serious diseases due to food adulteration! In the long run, it causes deadly diseases like cancer! Excessive use of chemicals in adulterated products and foodstuffs is increasing the death rate. The death rate due to several diseases caused by adulterated food, especially dysentery, stomach pain, gastric-ulcer, high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney and stomach problems and cancer is increasing at an alarming rate. Diabetic and hypertensive problems have increased exponentially in every family. Dying cancer patients at home now! Small children are suffering from various diseases! The most responsible behind this is the adulteration and various harmful chemicals added to our food chain! Which is an ominous sign for the future.

Suppose you bought adulterated food from the market and you or your family members got sick after eating it! Naturally, one should go to the doctor and take medicine for healing. But the sad fact is that there are fake/adulterated medicines in the medicine market too! According to a report of the Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB), adulterated or low-quality medicines worth about one and a half thousand taka are sold in the country every year About 20 percent of total drug sales. According to various statistics, the annual sale of adulterated and fake medicines in the domestic market is about 1.5 thousand crore Taka! That is, the medicines we rely on when we are sick are completely adulterated! A class of unknown drug companies are launching counterfeit drugs of well-known companies in the hope of higher profits. The gangs are making crores of taka by counterfeiting several medicines that are in demand. Even though the campaign against these counterfeit drugs has been conducted at various times, the violence of the counterfeiters has not stopped! When we are sick, we rely on the medicine, adulterated or fake medicine is increasing our various problems!

The law and its implementation may never be perfect. And so it is wrong to think that people's daily necessities including vegetables, fruits, rice, oil and other products will be completely free of adulteration. So individual awareness is most important in this regard. In particular, more importance should be given to how to produce the demand for vegetables, fruit or fish meat by oneself. Nowadays, organic agriculture is becoming quite popular. Organic agriculture is quite popular especially among the conscious circles.

Keeping the produced crops free from poisons and protecting the balance of the environment is the main idea of organic agriculture. Everyone should cultivate as much as possible in their backyard or fallow land. By doing this, nutritional needs will be met as well as unadulterated food can be consumed.

If you dig a pond next to your house and start a small poultry farm, you will meet your and your family's non-vegetarian needs, and you will also be assured of unadulterated food. Rooftop farming is becoming popular day by day in the city. It is possible to meet the demand of fruits to some extent by planting different fruit trees on the roof. It is necessary to be more aware about children's food, because children's food is often adulterated. Harmful chemicals are found in even the famous and expensive brands of powdered milk.

We need to be more aware to keep future generations healthy. The big problem in our country is that the law here is very strict but its implementation is very little. In particular, there are laws to prevent food adulteration or drug adulteration without proper realization. Anti-counterfeiting operations are being carried out but are less than required. Some are using muscle power to carry on the adulterous business, as if it's all open-secret and no one is watching! Some people are involved in the adulteration business again after serving the sentence of the administration! So there is no choice to be aware of themselves! Besides producing as much as possible, we have to buy products carefully from the market. The more poison-free it is, the lower the risk. May our food be poison-free, may our daily life be beautiful.

The writer is a, Columnist & Officer, Janata Bank PLC, Chowrasta Branch, Patuakhali.