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FOOD

Will you Eat PURE SILVER THIS DIVALI?

An average of 275000 kgs of silver foil is eaten
by Indians every year. How much of it is
pure silver and how much is contaminated
with aluminium, nickel and lead?

This Divali and Bhai Dooj, as the sale of sweetmeats will hit an annual high, there is every likelihood that the silver foil (or the chandi ka vark as it is called) on the kaju burfees, chamchams and other popular mithais will not be pure silver. It
might not be silver at all, if the results of laboratory tests on 178 loosely-sold silver foil samples in Lucknow are to be believed.

While 90 percent of the silver foils contained silver, ten percent were just aluminium. The Indian standards require that the purity of edible silver foils should be 99.9 percent. In the Lucknow samples, only 46 percent (74 foil samples) complied with the Indian standards while the rest of them showed a lower silver content. Not just this, metal contamination was also found in the silver foils.

Copper present in 86 percent of the silver foils tested
Chromium, nickel and lead contamination in 54 percent of foils
Cadmium and manganese detected in 28 and 7 percent of foils respectively

In India, there are very few studies available on the quality of food-grade silver foils and these facts could just be the tip of the silver foil adulteration iceberg. In a
country like India where silver foil is very extensively used in mithais and also in medicine systems like Ayurved and Unani, the lack of information and the absence of mandatory standards is a grave cause of concern. Silver foil is not just used to make mithai more appealing in appearance, but also used in mughlai meat dishes,
desserts like kheer, chewable betel leaf (paan), mouth-freshening herbs and spices like areca nut, aniseed, green cardamom, chewing tobacco and dried dates.

The FAO/WHO Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives has included silver on the list of food additives under the functional class of colour. In India, The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act includes silver leaf in the prescribed list of food additives and requires that it should be 99.9 percent silver. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has also made national standards for silver leaf by way of IS:3110. Standardsetting, however, has done nothing to ensure that what consumers eat is actually safe, or if it is silver foil at all.

Silver foil manufacturing: a case of nonvegetarianism?

Little is known about how silver foils are manufactured. Vegetarians may balk at the fact that silver foils are manufactured by being hammered in leather bags. A piece of silver is kept in the middle of cattle/ox intestine or deer skin membranes and pounded to be made into a silver foil.

There is also a mechanical method with which silver foils are made by an automatic beating machine. This, however, is not a very popular method as the silverfoil
manufacturing market is still a largely unorganised and unregulated one, where much work is done by hand. This also means that most of the silver foil that we eat with sweets might not only be adulterated, but also be non-vegetarian in nature.