Festive food safety: how to check ghee, paneer, khoya and kuttu atta at home

Festival weeks put extra ghee, paneer, khoya and fasting flours into the market. Some of that food is fine. Some of it is not what the label, or the shopkeeper, says it is. This page sticks to the household checks the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has actually published, and to the warning signs that mean a doctor, not a blog.

What states have been asked to watch

On 5 October 2026, The Hindu BusinessLine reported that FSSAI had directed states to step up surveillance and sampling before Navratri and Diwali. The report says the regulator wants enforcement against adulterated, counterfeit and unsafe food, especially milk and milk products and sweets. Categories named in that account include sweets, snacks, savouries, namkeen, papad and fryums, edible oil, beverages, ghee, and singhada and kuttu flour. The order, as reported, also says commodities can vary by region, and gives kuttu atta and singhada atta in northern and western India as the example.

The report says state food safety commissioners were asked to inspect and sample, with attention to hotspots, and to use Food Safety on Wheels vans where they exist, for on-the-spot testing and for telling shoppers what is being checked.

This page has not reproduced the order itself. The description above is what BusinessLine reported from it.

What happened with kuttu atta in March 2026

A PTI report datelined Baghpat and Bareilly, 20 March 2026, and carried by NewsDrum and NDTV, said nearly 85 people were hospitalised in Baghpat, Bijnor, Bareilly and Bulandshahr after eating kuttu ka atta during Navratri. The report describes vomiting, diarrhoea, restlessness and discomfort. In Bijnor, illness was reported on the Thursday, which the copy calls the first day of Navratri. In one Bareilly family, symptoms started about an hour and a half after kachoris made with the flour.

Officials told the reporters that samples were being collected for laboratory testing, and that people should buy reliable, pre-packaged food. The report does not publish a laboratory result, and it does not name a single adulterant as the cause. A household test cannot close that gap.

The household starch check, as FSSAI describes it

FSSAI's DART page (Detect Adulteration with Rapid Test) is written for households. For ghee or butter and starch, it says:

• Take half a teaspoon of ghee or butter in a transparent glass bowl.
• Add 2 or 3 drops of tincture of iodine.
• A blue colour indicates mashed potato, sweet potato and other starches.

Guidance Note No. 14/2020 on traditional milk products, which FSSAI says is compiled from its regulations, standards and the DART book, and which it says does not have the force of law, gives one method for khoa, chhana, paneer and ghee:

• Boil a small quantity of the sample with some water.
• Cool it.
• Add a few drops of iodine solution.
• A blue colour indicates starch.

Use the steps as they are written. Do not taste the portion you have tested. Iodine is a test reagent, not a food.

DART also lists a visual check for atta, maida and suji (rawa): sand, soil, insects, webs, lumps, rodent hair and excreta can be seen by looking. That is the household check on the DART page for those flours. It is not a chemical test, and it is not written there as a kuttu-atta method. If flour smells stale, looks damp, or shows insects or droppings, do not cook it. Looking cannot tell you whether the flour is otherwise safe.

What a kitchen test cannot tell you

A blue colour, in these FSSAI texts, means starch may be present. It does not name the starch, it does not measure how much, and it does not say the rest of the food is acceptable.

No blue colour is not a clean chit. The March 2026 illnesses were followed by sample collection for a laboratory, which is the right next step when people are sick. The Hindu BusinessLine, writing about analogue paneer on 5 October 2026, makes a related point: an iodine reaction can indicate starchy adulteration, and it does not by itself prove what a product is. Laboratory testing is how composition is established.

ICMR-NIN's Guideline 12 says contaminated and adulterated food can cause food-borne illness. It names milk and milk products among foods that are frequently adulterated, and it says butter, ghee and khoa should be bought from reliable sources. The FSSAI guidance note's advice to consumers starts in the same place: avoid loose products, because the chance of adulteration is higher. Buy from a shop you can go back to, and prefer a sealed pack with a list of ingredients and a date.

Tests that use acids are not for the kitchen

The same guidance note also lists checks for coal-tar dyes in ghee, cottage cheese, condensed milk, khoa and milk powder, and for vanaspati or margarine in ghee, butter and sweet curd. Those methods use dilute sulphuric acid or hydrochloric acid, including concentrated hydrochloric acid in the dye check. A further check for blotting paper in rabri also uses hydrochloric acid.

Do not do these at home. Concentrated acids burn skin, eyes and lungs, and they do not belong in a kitchen cupboard. FSSAI's own manual of methods for testing adulterants is written for laboratories, with test tubes, burners and reagents prepared under laboratory conditions. If you suspect vanaspati in ghee, or a dye, keep the pack and the bill and contact the food safety authority. Let them sample it.

See a doctor if

See a doctor, or go to a hospital, if you or someone at home develops vomiting, diarrhoea, restlessness or feels unwell after ghee, paneer, khoya, kuttu atta, sweets or any other festive food. Do this straight away for a child, an older person, or someone who is pregnant. Do not wait to finish a kitchen test, and do not decide from the colour of an iodine drop whether the illness is real.

The March 2026 reports described those symptoms after buckwheat-flour meals. This page cannot tell you the cause of an illness. A clinician can.

If the person is drowsy, cannot keep water down, or you are frightened by how quickly they have worsened, treat it as urgent and seek emergency care. That is ordinary caution. It is not a diagnosis.

Where to report food you suspect

Guidance Note No. 14/2020 lists these routes for a consumer complaint:

• Email: compliance@fssai.gov.in
• WhatsApp: 9868686868
• Toll-free: 1800112100
• Food Safety Connect, on the web and as an Android app

Keep the packet, the batch if it is printed, and where you bought it. Enforcement sampling is what the October 2026 state drive is for. A home iodine test is only the narrow starch check described above.