For us Indians, a lunch or dinner cannot be considered healthy and wholesome without a serving of a comfort food like moong or masoor daal. If you cannot imagine going a day without having some daal, you should seriously rethink your decision as you might be consuming some harmful chemicals with your food. New studies conducted by national food safety authorities have proved that the pulses getting imported in India from countries like Canada and Australia–where the production is at an all-time high–that find their way in our kitchen are seriously laced with toxic ingredients. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has warned the consumers to stop having these daals regularly as laboratory testing found high traces of chemicals in the final samples. It included herbicides like Glyphosate, which is a weed killer mostly used in the farming community to get rid of rodents and weeds. Commenting on the issue, an FSSAI official said, “There is a possibility of higher levels of residues of the herbicide Glyphosate in pulses which could adversely affect the health of consumers here. Since the maximum residue limits (MRL) for Glyphosate in pulses has not been specified in the FSSAI regulations, we have asked the concerned officials to follow the Canadian standards for the herbicide as specified in the Codex standards.” In fact, tests conducted by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on thousands of samples of lentils like moong daal produced by farmers in Canada and Australia found an average 282 parts per billion (PPB) and 1,000 parts per billion of glyphosate respectively, which is extremely high by any standards.
