Vark (also varak or warq) is a fine

filigree Filigree (also less commonly spelled ''filagree'', and formerly written ''filigrann'' or ''filigrene'') is a form of intricate metalwork used in jewellery and other small forms of metalwork. In jewellery, it is usually of gold and silver ...

foil Foil may refer to: Materials * Foil (metal), a quite thin sheet of metal, usually manufactured with a rolling mill machine * Metal leaf, a very thin sheet of decorative metal * Aluminium foil, a type of wrapping for food * Tin foil, metal foil ...

sheet of pure metal, typically

silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...

but sometimes

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...

,Gold in Gastronomy
deLafee, Switzerland (2008) used to decorate

South Asian sweets Mithai (sweets) are the confectionery and desserts of the Indian subcontinent.food Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is in ...

. The silver and gold are edible, though flavorless. Vark is made by pounding silver into sheets less than one

micrometre The micrometre (American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: μm) or micrometer (American and British English spelling differences# ...

(μm) thick, typically 0.2 μm-0.8 μm. The silver sheets are typically packed between layers of paper for support; this paper is peeled away before use.Madhu Gadia, 2000
New Indian Home Cooking: More Than 100 Delicious Nutritional, and Easy Low-fat recipes
It is fragile and breaks into smaller pieces if handled with direct skin contact. Leaf that is 0.2 μm thick tends to stick to skin if handled directly. Vark sheets are laid or rolled over some South Asian sweets, confectionery, dry fruits and spices.DK, 2017
The Periodic Table Book: A Visual Encyclopedia of the Elements
Vijaya Ghose, Jaya Ramanathan, and Renuka N. Khandekar, 1992
Tirtha, the Treasury of Indian Expressions
Page 61. It is also placed onto mounds of

saffron Saffron () is a spice derived from the flower of ''Crocus sativus'', commonly known as the "saffron crocus". The vivid crimson stigma (botany), stigma and stigma (botany)#style, styles, called threads, are collected and dried for use mainly ...

rice on platters.Maya Tiwari, 2005
Ayurveda: A Life of Balance : the Complete Guide to Ayurvedic
1989
The Illustrated Weekly of India
Volume 110, Issues 36-44 - Page 39. For safety and ethical reasons, the government of India has issued food safety and product standards guidelines for manufacturers of silver foil.

History

Etymology

Varaka means cloth, cloak or a thing that covers something else. Vark is sometimes spelled ''Varaq'', ''varq'', ''vark'', ''varkh'', ''varakh'', ''varkha'', or ''waraq'' (, ur, ورق ). In Persian, ''varaqa'' (borrowed from

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

''waraq''), means a sheet, leaf or foil.

The vark product

Silver Coated Spices By Shree Aditya Silver Leaves

Manufacturing

Vark is made by placing the pure metal dust between parchment sheets, then pounding the sheets until the metal dust molds into a

, usually less than one

(μm) thick, typically 0.2 μm-0.8 μm. The sheets are typically packed with paper for support; this paper is peeled away before use. it generally takes 2 hours to pound the silver particles into foils.‘Chandi ka Warq’ business may become history soon

The Economic Times ''The Economic Times'' is an Indian English-language business-focused daily newspaper. It is owned by The Times Group. ''The Economic Times'' began publication in 1961. As of 2012, it is the world's second-most widely read English-language bu ...

, 8 Jan 2018. Particles were traditionally manually pounded between the layers of ox gut or cow hide. It is easier to separate the silver leaf from the animal tissue than to separate it from the paper. Due to the concerns of the vegetarian population of India, manufacturers have switched to the modern technologies that have evolved for the production of silver leaves in India, Germany, Russia and China. Modern technologies include beating over sheets of black special treated paper or polyester sheets coated with food grade calcium powder (nicknamed "German plastic") are used instead of ox-guts or cow hide.

Old City Old City often refers to old town, the historic or original core of a city or town. Old City may refer to several places: Historical cities or regions of cities ''(by country)'' *Old City (Baku), Azerbaijan * Old City (Dhaka), Bangladesh, also ca ...

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern Indi ...

used to be the hub of traditional manual manufacturing, where it is a dying trade.

Usage as food

The silver is edible, though flavourless. It is also commonly used in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

, and

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mo ...

as coating on sweets, dry fruits , and in sugar balls, betel nuts, cardamom, and other spices. Estimated consumption of vark is 275 tons annually Using edible silver and gold foils on sweets, confectionery and desserts is not unique to the Indian subcontinent; other regions such as Japan and Europe have long used precious metal foils as food cover and also decoration, including specialty drinks such as Danziger Goldwasser.

Vegetarian ethical issues

Concerns have been raised about the ethical acceptability and food safety of vark, as not all of it is pure silver, nor hygienically prepared, and the foil was until fairly recently beaten between layers of ox-gut because it is easier to separate the silver leaf from animal tissue than to separate it from paper. Due to the grinding effect of the hammering, some of the animal intestine becomes part of the silver foil, which is sold in bulk.Thanwardas Lilaram Vaswani, 1992
East and West Series
Issues 412-423, Page 10. Since

Jains Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...

and a considerable percentage of

Hindus Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

are vegetarian, this led to the decline in the usage of vark in sweets or suparis.

Indian Airlines Indian Airlines was a division of Air India Limited. It was based in Delhi and focused primarily on domestic routes, along with several international services to neighbouring countries in Asia. It was a division of Air India Limited after m ...

asked its caterers to not apply vark to the food supplied to ensure no animal intestine is present. In 2016,

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

banned the usage of animal guts or skins in the making of vark.Govt slogs its guts out for ‘vegetarian’ chandi ka vark
Daily Pioneer, 8 June 2016. Consequently, the Indian market for vark has mostly converted to using the machine-based vegetarian process in the making of the silver foils.

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is a statutory body established under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India. The FSSAI has been established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which is a co ...

has issued guidelines for the silver leaf manufactures to adhere to regarding thickness, weight, purity, labeling and hygiene of the silver leaf.

Safety

Gold and silver are approved food foils in the European Union, as E175 and E174 additives respectively. The independent European food-safety certification agency, TÜV Rheinland, has deemed gold leaf safe for consumption. Gold and silver leaf are also certified as

kosher (also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, yi, כּשר), fro ...

. These inert precious metal foils are not considered toxic to human beings nor to broader ecosystems. Large quantities of ingested bioactive silver can cause

argyria Argyria or argyrosis is a condition caused by excessive exposure to chemical compounds of the element silver, or to silver dust. The most dramatic symptom of argyria is that the skin turns blue or blue-grey. It may take the form of ''generalize ...

, but the use of edible silver or gold as ''vark'' is not considered harmful to the body, since the metal is in inert form (not ionic bioactive form), and the quantities involved in normal use are minuscule. One study has found that about 10% of 178 foils studied from the

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and divis ...

(India) market were made of

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...

. Of the tested foils, 46% of the samples were found to have the desired purity requirement of 99.9% silver, whereas the rest had less than 99.9% silver. All the tested Indian foils contained on average trace levels of nickel (487 ppm), lead (301 ppm), copper (324 ppm), chromium (83 ppm), cadmium (97 ppm) and manganese (43 ppm). All of these are lower than natural anthropogenic exposures of these metals; the authors suggest there is a need to address a lack of purity standards in European Union and Indian food additive grade silver.Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
See toxicity, food and exposure papers on nickel, lead, copper, chromium, cadmium and manganese. The total silver metal intake per kilogram of sweets eaten, from vark, is less than one milligram.

References

{{Garnish Indian desserts Pakistani desserts Nepalese desserts Food ingredients Gold Silver Food and drink decorations