A street food seller in Ludhiana has come under the scanner of social media but all for the wrong reasons. A street vendor in Ludhiana who sell Pakode was seen dipping sealed plastic oil pouches directly into a 'kadhai' of hot oil to open them. This particular act the food seller sparked uproar with netizens started to demanding action against him.
Social media users are labeling the pakode with different names- Cancer Bomb, Plastic Pakode, Microplastic Pakode, etc.
However, when the video sparked online upraor, the shopkeeper who put the packets in boiling refined oil and tore them said that he did all this on the instructions of a food blogger.
The video is of a pakora shop located on Gill Road in Ludhiana city, which is run by a person named Jaspal Singh.
In the entire 51-second video, it is seen that a pan full of boiling refined oil is kept in front of Jaspal. The food blogger standing in front of him says in the beginning that his (Jaspal's) style of opening the oil is very dangerous. As soon as the blogger says this, Jaspal picks up 5 sealed packets filled with refined oil in his hand and puts them directly in the pan.
He takes out all the five packets within a second, by then all the packets are opened and all the refined oil has gone into the pan. After this, the blogger also says that they melt the plastic in the oil itself.
After this Jaspal starts frying pakodas in a pan, while frying pakodas he says that if you want to drink water then it costs 20 rupees and if you want to eat pakodas then it costs 10 rupees, on this the blogger asks him whether there are plastic pakodas for 10 rupees.
So Jaspal smilingly says that what kind of plastic pakodas are there. After this he tells the blogger about his rate and pakodas, in the end he also tells his location.
After the video of the pakora vendor went viral on social media, the health department team raided his stall on Friday evening. The officials collected samples of sauce, bread toast and refined oil and sent them for testing.
Seeing the dirt spread on the stall and the poor condition of cleanliness, the team also reprimanded the shopkeeper and instructed him to maintain cleanliness.
As per reports, putting plastic in hot oil releases toxic chemicals like BPA (bisphenol-A) and dioxin. These chemicals can reach the body and cause cancer, hormonal disturbances, weakening of the immune system and serious diseases.
After being embroiled in this controversy, shopkeeper Jaspal Singh came forward and admitted his mistake and was quoted saying, "I had seen in some video that pouches are being put in and cooked in this way, so I thought of doing it in the food blogger's video for fun. I made a mistake, please forgive me. The food blogger also told me to do it, so I did it."
