Food and drink

• Gold can be used in food and has the E Number 175.^[13]
• Gold leaf, flake or dust is used on and in some gourmet foods, notably sweets and drinks as decorative ingredient.^[14] Gold flake was used by the nobility in Medieval Europe as a decoration in food and drinks, in the form of leaf, flakes or dust, either to demonstrate the host's wealth or in the belief that something that valuable and rare must be beneficial for one's health. Gold foil along with silver is sometimes used on the South Asian sweets including Burfi.^[15]
• Goldwasser (English: Goldwater) is a traditional herbal liqueur produced in Gdańsk, Poland, and Schwabach, Germany, and contains flakes of gold leaf. There are also some expensive (~$1000) cocktails which contain flakes of gold leaf^[16]. However, since metallic gold is inert to all body chemistry, it adds no taste nor has it any other nutritional effect and leaves the body unaltered.^[17]