Biscuit, confectionery, ice-cream and bakery product makers are not perturbed by a debate raging on the adverse impact of caramel. For, the companies say the grade of caramel they use is different from the ones used by carbonated beverage makers.
“We use plain caramel that is produced by heating sugar at high temperature,” says Prabhakar Kanade, chief research & development officer, Mother Dairy. “The catalyst used here is an organic compound — not ammonia or an ammonium compound, which is used by carbonated beverage makers,” says the official with the 1974-founded company, which has ice-creams in its portfolio, besides milk and other dairy products.
This caramel produced using liquid ammonia or ammonium compounds is also called acid-stable caramel. It is this grade, which has 4-methylimidazole, or 4-MI, high levels of which have been linked to cancer in animals, according to food safety experts.
Under rules and regulations prescribed by the Food & Safety & Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), users of acid-stable caramel have to indicate the same on the product. Users of plain caramel, however, have no such stipulation, because the regulator has described it as safe. The limit prescribed for the use of caramel by FSSAI is three grams per litre.
Beyond that there are no other rules and regulations, which indicate what users of acid-stable caramel should do.
Watch-dog bodies such as as the Centre for Science & Environment (CSE) say that the problem lies here. "It is this silence on the issue that complicates matters," says Savy Mishra, a food safety expert with CSE. "We should have standards like the ones prescribed by the Californian government."
The government in California in January this year had added 4-MI to the list of chemicals covered by it's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, also known as Proposition 65. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in whose products high levels of 4-MI were found by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in the US, were given the option to put warning levels on their cans. But the companies declined to do so opting instead to use a modified caramel, which is produced by using a different catalyst.
Coca-Cola has already said that it will use this modified caramel not only in California but in the entire US and the rest of the world. While in California the use of the modified caramel is with immediate effect, in other parts of the world, it will happen over a period of time.