Don’t Eat Silver Coated Sweets This Festive Season, Here’s Why Chandi Ka Warq Is Bad For Health

As the festive season has almost begun in India with Raksha Bandhan, Janmashtami, Ganesh Chaturthi, etc just around the corner, one thing you will see in abundance on streets is silver coated sweets. Using silver or gold warq is an age-old tradition, being followed in India from generations. It originated from the ancient Ayurvedic practice, in which practitioners used silver as an antimicrobial astringent (elements that provide anti-bacterial benefits). However, unlike older times, things have now changed, especially in terms of the quality of things that we use and eat. The standards of the silver coat or as we call it in Hindi, chandi ka warq has also degraded. This and a few other reasons have made it unfit for consumption. Here are some of those:

Adulteration During Festive Season

Now we all are aware that when the demand for sweets goes up during the festive season, the manufacturers start making things in abundance, which automatically degrade the quality of products, especially when it comes to food sold by some street vendors. Not only they have a limited workforce, but also there is a short supply of quality ingredients. Most vendors don’t use silver warq, but instead, they use its substitute, such as aluminum. In fact, as per media reports, traces of heavy metal contamination like nickel, lead, cadmium have also been detected in the past on sweets.

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Poor Quality Of Silver

Even if some of them do claim to use only silver, the customer should know that there are different qualities of silver coat available in the market. While you only want to consume pure silver on kaju barfi and ladoos, many shop vendors sell sweets coated with mixed or impure warq.

Unsanitary Conditions

This plays one of the major roles in food preparation. Especially given the current situation, you don’t want to put anything unsanitary in your system. Unhygienic and unsanitary conditions in workshops can lead to contamination, and can further lead to hampering food safety.

Manufacturing Process

According to media reports of leading publications, manufacturers of silver warq uses a certain method to prepare these that have caused distress to some consumers in past. Procedures like hammering a leather punch filed with silver strips, putting silver inside the guts of oxen and buffalo, and beating them to attain certain thinness and using modern machinery are not very healthy and hygienic way of making silver foil and turn silver coated sweets unfit for the consumption of humans.

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Food Safety And Standard Authority Of India Recommendation

After inspecting the manufacturing process, the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India stated that “silver leaf will not be manufactured using any material of animal origin at any stage of the manufacturing process,” according to a leading media house. However, in 2018, the Delhi High Court somehow stayed the implementation of this regulation on a PIL filed by traditional manufacturers of silver leaf, on the grounds that this would lead to job losses for thousands of workers.

How You Can Check Quality Of Silver Warq

As you touch the silver warq on the sweets and if the residue sticks to the fingers it probably is adulterated with aluminium. You can also check by burning a piece of silver warq, and if it turns ashes into grayish-black, it is a sign that it is not silver but aluminium. The silver leaf will disappear when rubbed on hands, but if it is aluminium it will become a small ball.

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