ISOLATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF MICROORGANISMS FROM JUNK FOODS

*Nisha K. Raju and Anju Paul

ABSTRACT

The junk food is a pejorative term for food containing high levels of calories from sugar or fat with little protein, vitamins or minerals. The main objectives of this project are Isolation and identification of pathogens from junk and fast food and the characterization of the identified pathogen. Various techniques used for the isolation and the identification used for this project are enumeration method, morphological characterization, culturing and the biochemical test. In this study, 9 junk food samples are selected, they are characterized and infectious agents are isolated from them. It is observed that Pani poori and Bhel poori have higher microbial content about 104 and 99 in number. Six different types of organisms were identified from the selected 9 samples. They are Klebsiella sp, Escherichia coli sp, Salmonella sp, Shigella, sp, Bacillus sp and Staphylococcus sp.

Keywords: Junk food, pathogens and infectious diseases.