Microbiological quality of street vended Panipuri in Jagtial district of Telangana, India

Street vended foods have gained a lot of popularity in recent days owing to their appealing taste and flavour. These foods apart from the taste and flavour, have been cost-effective and easily available for all people. That has been the reason for such high demand for these foods in all walks of life and are being relished by the populations from the rural to urban areas. Street foods have been satisfying the hunger of a good percentage of people at an affordable cost. On the other side of the situation, these foods have been posing a good risk of health problems for the people because of the unhygienic methods and process of preparation of these foods by the mostly illiterate community of businessmen who have been preparing them. Hence the need of evaluating these foods for the contamination levels and risk factors for human health have been exponentially felt and the present study was taken up. Therefore, the present study was carried out to check the microbiological quality of street vended panipuri sold in Korutla, Metpally, and Jagtial towns of Jagtial Dist, Telangana state. A total of ninety-six samples viz., water, dall and kachori (thirty two each) were aseptically collected from various vendors and were subjected for standard plate count, total Coliform count, total Salmonella count and total Staphylococcus aureus count. Results revealed that 74% of samples had high loads of bacterial pathogens such as Escherichia coli (41%), Staphylococcus aureus (31%), sp. (20%), Pseudomonas sp. (5%) and yeast (3%). Hence, it has been enumerated that the quality of street foods must be monitored, and standards of the microbiological load have to be followed for human health safety.