Introduction

Milk is a complex biological fluid secreted from the mammary glands of mammals that meet the nutritional needs of neonates of the species from which the milk is derived. Due to its nutritive value, milk is significant to young and old people (Kapoor et al., 2021) Milk is considered to be the ‘ideal food’ because of its abundant nutrients required by both infants and adults. It is one of the best sources of protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. The milk and dairy products industry is a vital food sector in many countries around the globe. Dairy-derived foods can cater to major nutritional requirements of people including infants and the geriatric population (Haldar et al., 2022).

Milk has contributed 5% to the national economy than any other farm commodity in the past 5 years. In the Indian scenario as per the government of India's admission, more than 70% of the milk available in India does not conform to Food Safety Standards Association India (FSSAI) standards. Millions of parents in our country today trust this milk for their children. Such milk is watered or skimmed to increase the amount of milk to increase their profit and cover the high demand and in this situation, they (the supplier) maintain its composition of starch, flour, urea, cane sugar, vegetable oil, etc., are added as adulterants and this activity called adulteration (Kapoor et al., 2021). Forensic toxicology is essential in ensuring the safety and integrity of milk, a staple in many diets. When it comes to detecting adulteration, scientists employ a range of sophisticated standard techniques are used to uncover any harmful additives or fraudulent practices.

Despite food legislation, adulteration remains uncontrolled, furthermore, legal steps laid down in the PFA Act are extremely difficult to maintain (Faraz et al., 2013) Milk and dairy product adulteration has become a global concern. The situation is significantly worse in developing and underdeveloped countries due to the absence of adequate monitoring and lack of proper law enforcement (Azad and Ahmed, 2016) Contamination deals with the unwanted deterioration of the quality of food; adulteration is defined as a process by which the quality of a product is reduced through the addition of an inferior substitute or removal of vital products. The knowledge about the specific effects of adulteration of milk on human health is very low (Tiwari et al., 2012). The nature of adulterants generally encountered in milk and milk products are water, removal of fat, addition of skim milk powder, reconstituted milk, and thickening agents such as starch, flour, glucose, urea, salt, and chlorine (Singuluri, 2014).

Nowadays milk is being adulterated in more sophisticated ways that demand cutting-edge research for the detection of adulterants. Milk adulteration detection techniques need to be very specific and rapid because defrauders have escaped condemnation claiming less effectiveness of the conventional detection techniques (Garcia et al., 2011) The existing common detection techniques are often inconvenient and inaccessible in these countries, making it challenging to tackle the various methods of fraudulent milk adulteration (Azad and Ahmed, 2016) Milk adulteration poses a significant risk to public health, affecting essential nutrients crucial for women, particularly in relation to reproductive health.

The present study explores methods to assess the extent of adulteration in various packaged milk samples available in the Bangalore region by analyzing physical parameters, while highlighting the negative impact of these adulterants on women's health.