Conceitos e alertas sobre fraudes em alimentos : uma revisão integrativa

Abstract

The population has changed their eating habits and are looking for industrialized foods every day, due to the lack of time to prepare a healthy meal, this has led to bad eating habits, and even the consumption of food of dubious quality. Food fraud has an economic motivation, in which companies only aim at profit, using additives capable of causing damage to public health. Anything related to the substitution, addition, adulteration or falsification of food, food ingredients or food packaging can be considered fraud, which is classified as a crime. This study aims to gather information from the literature to describe the concept of food fraud, portray the types of fraud detailing the characteristic of each one and, finally, mention the possible health risks that these foods are capable of causing to the consumer. According to the results obtained, it was possible to observe that it is a topic of concern today, due to the great demand of the population for these industrialized foods, in which the practice of defrauding food is still very common with the purpose of obtaining profit, and the negligence of supervisory bodies is a facilitating step for the occurrence of fraud. Because it causes great risks to health, inspection, the development of methods of authentication of food products and mainly, the attention of the population to the ingredients/packaging of the food are of paramount importance, food fraud is a crime and is provided for in the penal code.