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What should consumers be testing food products for?
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Thursday, 10 September, 2026, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Ashwin Bhadri
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Most of us do the same quick inspection when we buy a bottle of water. We look at the seal, glance at the expiry date and, perhaps, check the brand. Then we put it in the cart and move on. We don't stand in a supermarket wondering what might be inside the bottle at a microscopic level. That is what makes the growing conversation around microplastics and nanoplastics so difficult. We can now detect particles that were practically impossible to study in the past times. But our ability to find them has moved faster than our understanding of exactly what their presence means for human health.
The issue has already moved beyond laboratories. The Madras High Court has directed that bottled water, sugar, and salt sold in plastic packaging carry warnings about the possible presence of microplastics and nanoplastics. FSSAI has sought a review, arguing that the health effects are still not fully established and that such warnings could cause unnecessary alarm. Both sides of this debate point to something important. We are dealing with a subject where the science is still developing.
In my work, I have seen how quickly a laboratory report can become a headline before anyone has stopped to ask what the number actually means. A laboratory can tell us that a particle is present. It can identify it as plastic, measure its size, and report the quantity detected. But that result, by itself, does not tell us whether the level found represents a significant health risk.
So, what should we actually be testing for? For drinking water, microplastics should not distract us from the basics. Microbiological quality, heavy metals, and relevant chemical contaminants remain fundamental. The same principle applies to food. A packet of spices, a dairy product, and a ready-to-eat meal have very different risk profiles. The testing should reflect that. Microplastics may increasingly become part of this testing, but they cannot be treated as the only measure of safety.
Suppose one bottle of water contains a small, detectable quantity of microplastics. Another bottle has no detectable microplastics but fails a microbiological safety test. Which one should concern us first?
That is why I would be cautious about turning every laboratory finding into a headline about an unsafe product. There is also a limit to what we can expect from consumers. We can ask people to check labels, expiry dates, and licences. We cannot expect someone standing in a supermarket to know whether microscopic particles are present in a bottle of water. Most chemical contaminants cannot be seen, smelled, or tasted.
Food safety cannot become a consumer's laboratory exercise. The responsibility sits across the entire chain. Manufacturers have to understand where contamination can enter their processes. Packaging companies need to pay attention to materials that come into contact with food. Laboratories need testing methods that are reliable and comparable. Regulators need to keep pace as the science evolves. India also needs better surveillance of emerging contaminants. But simply generating more test reports will not solve the problem. We need consistent sampling, credible methods, and data collected over time. Otherwise, we risk treating isolated findings as national trends.
And then comes the question that is often overlooked: what do we tell people when a test is positive? The answer cannot simply be unsafe. We need to know what was tested, how it was tested, how much was found, and what the scientific evidence says about that level of exposure. A laboratory report tells us what it found. Risk assessment helps us understand what that finding means.
Consumers deserve to know what is in their food and water. They also deserve an honest explanation of what those findings mean. I don't think the answer is to ignore microplastics. Nor is it to frighten people before the evidence warrants it. The sensible approach is to detect early, test properly, and interpret the results carefully.
For consumers, that means asking better questions: What was tested? How was it tested? What was detected? At what level? And what do we actually know about its health significance? As testing technology becomes more sensitive, these questions will only become more important. We will find things we could not find before. The real test for India's food-safety system will be whether we can respond to those discoveries with evidence rather than emotion. Food safety should be built on evidence. The purpose of testing is to understand what is actually there, decide what matters, and take the right action. That is how testing earns trust.
(The author is CEO at Equinox Labs)
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