I Ate What?

I remember when I was little being enamored with the super-fancy little silver spheres that some relatives put on Christmas cookies.  I also remember being really annoyed that they wouldn't just let me have some to eat (no matter how much I begged) at cookie decorating time.   "They're for the cookies," they said. 

Now it's a few decades later and we have some in the house and I am free to eat the whole damn jar if I wanted to. Heck, I could go from grocery store to grocery store buying them out and later sit down with a cereal bowl filled with them, happily munching away while watching Scooby-Doo reruns on Boomerang.  

As a matter of fact, I think I will do just that. I'll show you, thirty-year old apparently traumatic memory of super-mean cookie-making relatives. Then maybe the voices in my head will be appeased... at least for a while. Before I grab my car keys and head out let me just check the label, here, to see what these things are actually called. 

Le'see... Silver Sugar Spheres. Hmph... Makes sense. Boy these things sure are shiny. I wonder how they do it. Maybe the ingredients will shed some light on this. 

Ok, 98.6% sugar - no shock there. Starch, glucose syrup - both wheat-based. Ok. Good to know especially if allergies are a concern.  Aluminum...

Whoa... Aluminum?  Like, the metal? No way. You know, other than Goldschlager, I don't think I have ever ingested something I could straight up find on a Periodic Table of the Elements.  I mean, even nutritional supplements like zinc come in compound form - it's not like you're eating the core of a penny or anything. 

Looking at the French list of ingredients gives E173 as the colorant, which Google confirms is, in fact, aluminum. There is also a warning  "Not for children less than three years old".  Well, that’s not a good sign...

Looking into it a little further you can find that the FDA qualifies these “silver dragées” as  confectionary and, since they contain a non-nutritive substance (aluminum, I guess), they may be considered “adulterated foods”.  Here is the pertinent part (of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (Section 402(d)(3)): Feel free to skip over this, btw.

A food shall be deemed to be adulterated... If it is confectionery, and... bears or contains any nonnutritive substance, except that this subparagraph shall not apply to a safe nonnutritive substance which is in or on confectionery by reason of its use for some practical functional purpose in the manufacture, packaging, or storage of such confectionery if the use of the substance does not promote deception of the consumer or otherwise result in adulteration or misbranding in violation of any provision of this chapter, except that the Secretary may, for the purpose of avoiding or resolving uncertainty as to the application of this subparagraph, issue regulations allowing or prohibiting the use of particular nonnutritive substances.

Yawn... So... are these French imports illegal in the U.S. or aren’t they?

Digging a little deeper we find that they are legal for sale in 49 of the 50 U.S. states.  California, it turns out, criminalized the sale of these on food unless the food is labeled “not for human consumption” thanks largely to a lawsuit from an environmental lawyer in 2003.

Amazon won’t even ship them there.  Wow.  Well, they will coordinate the shipment from companies outside the U.S. apparently but try as I might (I looked for a whole ten minutes) I could not find what the punishment would be for shipping a bottle of these or a box of cookies covered in these to a friend in California...

Now I know that eating silver is bad for you, but don’t we take in just a tiny, tiny bit of aluminum every time we crack open a soda or beer? Are these "candies" as bad or worse than that?  The FDA seems to have an issue with "silver" or "silver-colored" food additives of imports (Section 801(a)(3) of the code, in case you are interested).  

I am pretty confused.  Any lawyers or doctors (or both) out there that could clear this up for me?  I would be fascinated to know how the fine/jail time compares with other crimes like drug possession or driving without a license.

And to think I was going to end this article with some sort of comment on the rest of the ingredients (pig gelatin and carnauba wax)...

What a world.