Love the look of the tempting red-yellow mangoes at your local fruit vendor’s shop? Stop, before you reach for them. Dangerous chemicals could be the secret behind their good looks. These chemicals are not just carcinogenic and cause serious physiological problems, they are also banned by the Indian government.

On Tuesday, inspectors of the Maharashtra Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), raided two mango vendors at Ghatkopar and seized a huge amount of such artificially ripened mangos. The cost of these mangoes is more than Rs2.5 lakh.

According to joint FDA commissioner, Suhas Chaudhari, food inspectors LJ Rathod and Kranti Bhunje received specific information about certain vendors in Ghatkopar (east) artificially ripening mangoes.

“When officials raided the vendors, they found dozens and dozens of mangoes packed into boxes containing the dangerous calcium carbide powder. The first vendor had 348 dozen Alphonso mangoes costing Rs1.91 lakh. When officials conducted raids at the other vendors’ shops, 130 dozen mangoes costing Rs70,500 were seized,” Chaudhari said.

The vendors – Rajesh Kumar Vijayshankar Patel and Sampat Chandrawalli Patel – were selling mangoes near Satyam Shopping Centre, in Ghatkopar. “While the quantity of calcium carbide with Rajesh Kumar was not known as he had put it in the mango boxes, three kg calcium carbide was recovered from Sampat,” Chaudhari added.

He said the entire stock of mangoes had been handed over to the BMC who would be destroying it. “We will be sending samples of the mangoes to the laboratory for testing. Once the reports are in, we will register a case against the vendors under the prevention of food adulteration act,” Chaudhari said. By Ninad Siddhaye, DNA Indi

Mango. If you know little about this fruit, understand this: It’s been found to prevent or stop certain colon and breast cancer cells in the lab.

That’s according to a new study by Texas AgriLife Research food scientists, who examined the five varieties most common in the U.S.: Kent, Francine, Ataulfo, Tommy/Atkins and Haden.

Though the mango is an ancient fruit heavily consumed in many parts of the world, little has been known about its health aspects. The National Mango Board commissioned a variety of studies with several U.S. researchers to help determine its nutritional value.

“If you look at what people currently perceive as a superfood, people think of high antioxidant capacity, and mango is not quite there,” said Dr. Susanne Talcott, who with her husband, Dr. Steve Talcott, conducted the study on cancer cells. “In comparison with antioxidants in blueberry, acai and pomegranate, it’s not even close.”

But the team checked mango against cancer cells anyway, and found it prevented or stopped cancer growth in certain breast and colon cell lines, Susanne Talcott noted.

“It has about four to five times less antioxidant capacity than an average wine grape, and it still holds up fairly well in anticancer activity. If you look at it from the physiological and nutritional standpoint, taking everything together, it would be a high-ranking super food,” she said. “It would be good to include mangoes as part of the regular diet.”

The Talcotts tested mango polyphenol extracts in vitro on colon, breast, lung, leukemia and prostate cancers. Polyphenols are natural substances in plants and are associated with a variety of compounds known to promote good health.

Mango showed some impact on lung, leukemia and prostate cancers but was most effective on the most common breast and colon cancers.

“What we found is that not all cell lines are sensitive to the same extent to an anticancer agent,” she said. “But the breast and colon cancer lines underwent apotosis, or programmed cell death. Additionally, we found that when we tested normal colon cells side by side with the colon cancer cells, that the mango polyphenolics did not harm the normal cells.”

The duo did further tests on the colon cancer lines because a mango contains both small molecules that are readily absorbed and larger molecules that would not be absorbed and thus remain present in a colon.

“We found the normal cells weren’t killed, so mango is not expected to be damaging in the body,” she said. “That is a general observation for any natural agent, that they target cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone, in reasonable concentrations at least.”

The Talcotts evaluated polyphenolics, and more specifically gallotannins as being the class of bioactive compounds (responsible for preventing or stopping cancer cells). Tannins are polyphenols that are often bitter or drying and found in such common foods as grape seed, wine and tea.

The study found that the cell cycle, which is the division cells go through, was interrupted. This is crucial information, Suzanne Talcott said, because it indicates a possible mechanism for how the cancer cells are prevented or stopped.

“For cells that may be on the verge of mutating or being damaged, mango polyphenolics prevent this kind of damage,” she said.

The Talcotts hope to do a small clinical trial with individuals who have increased inflamation in their intestines with a higher risk for cancer.

“From there, if there is any proven efficacy, then we would do a larger trial to see if there is any clinical relevance,” she said. redOrbit