Representational Image.

DHAKA, Jan 2, 2025 (BSS)- Thirteen-month-old Ayaz puts whatever he finds into his mouth. He has no understanding of which things are good or bad. He cannot comprehend whether something will benefit or harm him. Therefore, every parent-especially mothers-must keep a close watch on children of this age.

Ahsan Habib and Shanta Islam, a couple from Ghashipur village in Chandpur Sadar Upazila, said, "Ayaz is our first son. We don't want any negligence regarding his food, diet, or health awareness. According to our ability, we try to provide him with nutritious, healthy, and safe food."

To provide food for their children, fathers work tirelessly, and mothers make countless arrangements. Many poor parents starve themselves to feed their children. Wealthier parents purchase expensive food items from the best restaurants in the city and feed their children. 

All of this is done in hopes of keeping children healthy, ensuring their physical and mental well-being. But in reality, are the foods consumed by our children-or even adults-in this country truly healthy and nutritious? Consuming adulterated food not only fails to protect health; it actually causes illness among children.

Dr. Zahurul Haque Sagar, a pediatrician at a diagnostic center in Dhaka, said that a child's primary food is milk. Milk supports survival, growth, and provides essential nutrition. Powdered or liquid milk is often mixed with water, flour, cornflour, etc., to increase quantity. 

Although such adulteration reduces nutritional value, it may not cause life-threatening harm. But, if the white liquid we feed our little ones is not milk at all but a mixture of urea, liquid detergent, a little sugar, vegetable oil, and contaminated water, then it becomes a severe threat to a child's life.

Regular consumption of such adulterated mixtures destroys various organs and the normal functions of the entire body. For example, salt containing lead or chromium can cause anemia, paralysis, mental disability, and brain damage in children. Pregnant mothers may also suffer miscarriages. 

Deep-fried items made from gram flour-such as potato chops, eggplant fritters, onion fritters-and many sweets such as laddoo, barfi, and jilapi, grilled chicken, pulao, etc., are often colored with toxic chemical dyes used in textile factories to make the food look bright yellow and appealing. Since these industrial dyes are cheaper than approved food colors, producers and vendors use harmful dyes to reduce cost.

Dr. Sagar further said that food adulteration is not only illegal but also unethical. In spices, brick dust, wood powder, sand, straw dust, even horse or cow dung are mixed-imagine the level of morality behind such actions! Only an immoral person is capable of ripening fruits with carbide, preserving fish with formalin, boiling cheap karamba fruits with toxic dye and sugar to sell at Taka 400 per kilogram, using engine oil instead of cooking oil for frying, or coloring cheap lentils to pass them off as high-quality varieties.

Because outside or store-bought foods are unsafe, mothers try to prepare as much homemade food for their children as possible. But even a common ingredient like flour-used for making tiffin or snacks-often contains sand, dirt, soap powder, or chalk powder.

Even gram flour is not safe-wood dust, discarded tea waste, and coffee powder is mixed into it. Salt is often adulterated with washing soda. In such cases, not only is iodine absent, the salt may not even be real salt. Many sweets are wrapped in aluminum foil to attract children, and children often ingest the foil along with the sweet. 

Aluminum is extremely harmful to health. Ghee is often adulterated with animal fat, toxic chemical dyes, and pumpkin pulp. Vermicelli-a favorite of both children and adults-is produced and fried in unhealthy fats and dried in extremely dirty, open environments. Consuming these can cause diarrhea, dysentery, and other diseases such as kidney failure, stomach and liver cancer, cirrhosis, headaches, irritability, etc.

Juices, chocolates, and canned foods made for children often contain additives to enhance taste. As a result, children may become more restless, sleep less, and show reduced concentration in studies.

Even sick children are not spared from adulteration. In July 2009, 25 innocent children died after consuming adulterated fever syrup. Food adulterators become murderers. Some pharmaceutical companies use ethylene glycol or diethylene glycol instead of propylene glycol when producing paracetamol syrup. 

To increase profit, unethical manufacturers mix toxic ingredients with propylene glycol. Detecting the level of adulteration is not difficult for drug manufacturers. Excessive propylene glycol in paracetamol syrup damages children's kidneys, liver, and brain. According to the drug administration, propylene glycol content in paracetamol syrup must not exceed 0.1%.

This is not only the situation in Bangladesh. Worldwide, approximately 1.8 million children die every year from consuming adulterated food. Deaths from adulterated paracetamol syrups are not new. In Nigeria, 84 children died in 2006 from consuming adulterated infant formula. In Haiti, 85 children died in 1996 from consuming cough syrup; similar incidents occurred in Nigeria in 1990, killing 47 children.

Dr. Sagar advised parents-especially mothers-that the public must actively participate in preventing food adulteration. Citizens must know the related laws and hand over food and medicine adulterators to law-enforcement agencies. 

According to Bangladesh's Pure Food Ordinance, 1959, adding toxic chemicals, harmful dyes, narcotic substances like calcium carbide, formalin, pesticides, unrefined oil, fragrant chemicals, etc., to food is completely prohibited. Selling low-quality, rotten, stale food or using false labels is punishable by law.

Today's children will build tomorrow's society and nation. We cannot expect anything good from a sick and physically impaired generation. Through adulterated food and medicine, not only a few children but the entire population is getting sick and dying. This causes financial, emotional, and physical harm. Such injustice must not be tolerated. Citizens everywhere-urban and rural-should unite against adulterators. Strong consumer societies must be formed to resist them collectively. Every parent should reject adulterated and harmful foods for the sake of their children.