Swallowing gold is a form of "suicide", why do some people still eat gold?

Many businesses will add some gold foil to foods such as steaks and cakes, making them veritable golden rice, golden cakes, etc. Diners will feel very proud. After all, gold has been a symbol of identity and status since ancient times.

Aside from the high value, some readers are curious: Didn't people in ancient times commit suicide by swallowing gold? Just like You Erjie in A Dream of Red Mansions.

Since swallowing gold is a way of suicide, why do people dare to and even advocate eating gold?

Golden Cake (Source: Good Cake Network)

To clarify these issues, we must first talk about the chemical element "gold".

Life and death are not fate, but they all have their own reasons

Gold, commonly known as "gold", is a heavy metal with the chemical symbol Au. Gold is usually used to make currency, jewelry, etc., and has good ductility. At the same time, due to its stable physical properties, only aqua regia can dissolve it, so it is also used in the medical field, such as dentures inlaid with gold.

Looking at the history of edible gold, you will find that there are many ways to "eat gold".

As early as the Qin and Han Dynasties more than 2,000 years ago, people wanted to achieve immortality, so they refined gold, mercury and other items into elixirs and took them. However, the result was that they failed to achieve immortality and often lost their lives. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the rich people made gold and jade powder into pills and took them with warm wine. It is said that the handsome man Pan An from Zhongmu, Zhengzhou, Henan took these pills for a long time.

So why do some people die after taking the same gold powder while others are fine?

In fact, this is mainly because the gold they consume has different purities. According to the purity of gold, it can be divided into raw gold and cooked gold. Raw gold refers to gold that has not been smelted and purified, and the gold content is usually between 50% and 90%. In addition to the gold element, raw gold usually contains chemical substances such as lead and mercury. If people eat it, it will cause gastric ulcers, liver necrosis and other diseases. In excess, it will have a toxic effect on the skin and mucous membranes, nervous system, liver and kidneys, etc., and cause death.

"Bencao Jing Jizhu" records: "(Raw gold) can ward off evil and is poisonous. If it is not refined, it can kill people if taken." The most prominent example of the use of raw gold is gold-dust wine.

Gold-dust wine is also called gold wine and gold foil wine. It is said to contain orpiment and raw gold foil, which is different from the gold foil wine consumed by modern people.

Orpiment is arsenic trisulfide, also known as "gold stone", which is highly poisonous and has a golden luster. Gongsun Huang, a minister of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period, Sima Yi, the deposed crown prince of Jin, and Jia Nanfeng, the ugly queen, all died from drinking gold dust wine.

Gold production in ancient times (Source: ScienceNet)

Compared with raw gold, cooked gold with a purity of more than 90% is much safer. First, gold is chemically inactive and will not react with other substances in the stomach and intestines. If the amount is not large, it can be excreted from the body through feces; second, ancient Chinese medicine classifies gold foil made from cooked gold as a medicinal material, and its production process is very professional.

When making gold foil, they took advantage of the good ductility of gold, put a small piece of cooked gold on straw paper, rolled it hard, pressed it into a very thin foil, and then mixed it with medicine for consumption. From this, we can see that even if you "eat gold", whether you live or die depends entirely on the purity and amount of gold.

In ancient times, women died from swallowing gold. The "gold" here refers to large pieces of raw gold, usually gold bars or gold leaves. After entering the human digestive system, they pierced the stomach and intestines and caused blood loss, causing death. "A flesh and blood body relies on food and water. Can it bear such heavy gold and stone in the stomach for a long time?" (Compendium of Materia Medica). Swallowing gold to commit suicide requires great determination, and the scene describing You Erjie's suicide in "Dream of Red Mansions" is a clear example.

The article reads, "(She) often heard people say that raw gold can cause one to fall to death, which is cleaner than hanging oneself. After thinking about it, she struggled to get up, opened the box, and found a piece of raw gold. She didn't know how heavy it was, so she swallowed it into her mouth with tears in her eyes. She straightened her neck several times before she could swallow it."

After swallowing gold, the person will suffer from severe abdominal pain while being unable to eat. If the gold has edges, it will pierce the intestines and cause death quickly. If the gold is smooth, then it will be a "wait to die" in the true sense.

Gold is good, but you should drink it in moderation

In ancient times, due to the backward technology, people had insufficient scientific knowledge about gold, so there were many tragedies of people accidentally eating pills made from raw gold and dying without knowing it. In modern times, with the improvement of people's living standards and the popularization of scientific knowledge, manufacturers use gold as a food additive to meet sensory needs.

"Gold foil has been used as a food additive internationally for a long time. The International Expert Committee on Food Additives has assessed that gold is safe to use as a food additive, and there is no limit on its use," Academician Chen Junshi, chief consultant of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, once said to the media. The "very long time" he mentioned refers to 1983. That year, the World Health Organization officially included gold in the category of food additives (numbered as Table A No. 310).

Since then, gold leaf has been included in the list of "substances used as new food resources" approved by the Chinese Ministry of Health. As a result, gold leaf wine, gold leaf candy, gold leaf cake, gold leaf coffee, etc., which use the addition of gold as a publicity gimmick, have been launched with great fanfare. The Japanese are even more attentive in this regard. Not only do they produce gold leaf wine that is well-known in the industry, they have also carefully invented dazzling and bright spray-type gold powder to be sprayed on cappuccino or cake.

Letter from the General Office of the National Health and Family Planning Commission on Soliciting Opinions on the Proposed Approval of Gold Foil as a New Type of Food Additive (Source: Food Safety Network)

**The most noteworthy one is gold leaf wine. **Gold leaf wine refers to liquor made with gold leaf as a food additive. The World Health Organization stipulates that its maximum usage is 0.02 grams per kilogram of wine, and its gold purity is 99.99%. Not to mention that ordinary people cannot reach this amount of alcohol, even if they drink so much, alcohol poisoning is far worse than gold leaf poisoning.

The expensive gold foil wine (Source: China Wine Network)

Nowadays, people's pursuit of the shiny and bright appearance of edible gold has long surpassed the evaluation of its practical value.

"From a nutritional perspective, more than 20 elements have been identified as necessary for the human body, but gold is definitely not one of them. my country adopts a licensing management system for food additives, and gold foil is not allowed to be used in foods other than liquor. Using gold foil in food is definitely a violation of regulations," said Fan Zhihong, associate professor at the School of Food Science and Engineering at China Agricultural University, in an open article.

Therefore, eating those shiny, golden products is just to satisfy the vanity of some people.

In short, although gold can be added to food as an additive, try not to eat it if you can. After all, it has no nutritional value and does not contain elements necessary for the human body. If you eat it of low purity, it is not cost-effective to get sick and be hospitalized.

The reference books and magazines for this article include "Records of the Three Kingdoms", "Book of Jin", "Compendium of Materia Medica", "Collected Annotations to the Classic of Materia Medica", "Dream of Red Mansions", "Gold Dust Wine", and "Literary and Historical Knowledge". The papers include "On Chinese Wine Culture" and "Research and Analysis on Gold Ore Dressing Technology".

END

Review expert: Wang Guoyi, postdoctoral fellow in food safety.

Tadpole Musical Notation original article/reprint please indicate the source

Editor/Heart and Paper