The greed to make more profit in an excruciatingly biting economy that Nigerians are now witnessing is rising by the day. In the local Nigerian markets unscrupulous spice merchants are now exploiting the food inflation to heavily adulterate daily kitchen staples.
Some of the usually tied ground food items like egusi, pepper, pepper soup spices, turmeric powder, ginger powder and the likes are now pure poison. Some greedy food merchants now adulterate them with additives that are dangerous to health.
Economy&Lifestyle has discovered that even fresh tomato-pastes are also being adulterated with industrial powdered colouring.
This is as food ingredients like ground pepper are mixed with rejected plant husks, and finely milled wood charcoal to replicate authenticity and artificially inflate product volumes for maximum profit.
The new trend which wasn’t the case years back are said to be triggered by economic hardship coupled with low purchasing power.
For the traders, these dangerous, non-food additives help them mask low-grade produce and deceive shoppers.
Eye witness reports at grinding points in some markets showed that merchants gather cheap, low-quality, or rejected components, including rotten chilli seeds, fibrous plant straws, dried pear leaves, and starch powder as base materials to ground food staples.
Although the mixture produce a dull, unappetizing brown powder, traders deliberately introduce dangerous additives to colour it up.
