Is gold foil edible?

Not all gold foils can be eaten, only edible gold foils can be eaten.

China is the first place in the history of eating gold foil. As far back as the Qin and Han dynasties, the Chinese rich had records of eating gold foil and gold powder. In modern times, eating gold foil is also popular in Japan and Southeast Asia. The pure gold with the purity of 99.99% is vaporized physically to make it evenly dispersed into small molecules, and then these small gold molecules are stacked again to form the food additive gold foil by precisely controlling the molecular epitaxial stack.

In p>1983, the Codex Committee of Food Additives of the World Health Organization officially listed 9999 natural pure gold in the category of food additives as Table A No.31. The eighth class minerals and trace elements, a new food resource issued by the Ministry of Health of China, defined the edible function of gold foil.

Extended information:

The classification of gold foil can be roughly divided into two categories: industrial gold foil and edible gold foil. The production process is a daily workshop, with about 11 production processes, during which there are no sanitary links such as disinfection and cleaning, so the industrial gold foil can not meet the food hygiene standards. The edible gold foil, however, is produced in strict accordance with hygiene standards and sterilized by high-temperature distillation, reaching the edible level.

China is the first place in the history of eating gold. As far back as the Qin and Han dynasties, the Chinese rich had records of eating gold foil and gold powder. In modern times, eating gold foil is also popular in Japan and Southeast Asia. In 1983, the Codex Committee of Food Additives of the World Health Organization officially listed 9999 natural pure gold in the category of food additives as Table A No.31. The edible gold foil we are introducing now has a thickness of only one ten thousandth of a millimeter, which is unknown to ordinary people.

As a metal itself, it is opaque, but the edible gold foil is so thin that it can be transparent to light, so even if it is described as "as thin as a cicada's wing", it is actually much thinner than a cicada's wing, and it will break under the tension of water, so it is almost impossible to pick it up by hand. According to the record of "epigraphy" in Compendium of Materia Medica, raw gold is toxic, such as epigraphy under natural conditions, and there are many impurities, so it is toxic and inedible.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Edible Gold Foil

People's Daily-Health Planning Commission plans to approve gold foil as a food additive, which has been used in medicine for a long time.