Those Laddoos Are Non-Veg

Silver foil on Indian sweets is made by beating it between animal skins, but few vegetarians know this.

If you are a strict vegetarian with a sweet tooth, then there’s a strong possibility that your faith has been violated. Varakh, the silver or gold foil coating on Indian sweets such as kaju katli, laddoo and barfi, is made by beating it between ox skins. While this is common knowledge among Jains because of their stringent vegetarianism, the rest of India continues to be largely unaware of this fact.

“Some 99.9 per cent of all varakh in India is manufactured that way because it’s cheaper,” says Dr Nandita Shah, from Sharan, an NGO working on holistic health awareness. In 2009, Beauty Without Cruelty, a Pune-based NGO, published a report on the varakh industry which described the process in detail.  Animals are selected at the slaughterhouse based on the softness of their skin. The skins are soaked in vats for 12 days to dehair them. The workers then peel away the epidermal layer (called jhilli) under the top layer of the skin. The skin is soaked again to soften it and left to dry on wooden boards. It is then cut into square pieces and stacked into booklets. Thin strips of silver are placed carefully between the booklets, which are then hit with wooden mallets to turn it into ultra-thin varakh.

KK Jalandra of DS Group, manufacturers of Baba and Tulsi Zarda, says that the vegetarian varakh they make is 15 per cent costlier. “Unless the consumer is aware and strict about consuming vegetarian food, varakh made the traditional way helps keeps costs down and profits higher,” he says.

Not only is varakh non-vegetarian, it is also impure. Toxic metals such as nickel, lead, chromium and cadmium were discovered in the silver foil in the course of a study conducted in November 2005 by the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre in Lucknow. Over half of the analysed foils had lower silver purity than the 99.9 per cent stipulated by the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act of India.

About The Author

Shubhangi Swarup