Gold foil has a long history. As far back as the Qin and Han dynasties, Chinese rich people have records of eating gold foil and gold powder. In modern times, it is also popular to eat gold leaf in Japan and Southeast Asia. The pure gold with a purity of 99.99% is physically vaporized to make it uniformly dispersed into small molecules, and then these small gold molecules are rearranged to form a food additive gold foil by precisely controlling the molecular epitaxy stacking.

Because of these two characteristics, gold foil is listed as a safe and edible existence

Firstly, the chemical nature of gold is stable, no adverse chemical reaction will occur after entering the human body, it is non-toxic to the human body and will not be absorbed by the human body.

Secondly, gold has good physical ductility and can be beaten into gold foil that is only one ten-thousandth of a millimeter thick. One gram of gold can be beaten into pure gold foil of about 0.5 square meters and 0.12 μm thickness. The texture of gold foil is so soft that it will not harm the human digestive tract when it enters the body.

In 1983, the World Health Organization Codex Committee on Food Additives officially listed 9999 natural pure gold in the category of food additives and compiled it as Table A No. 310. The 8th category of minerals and trace elements in the new food resources released by the Ministry of Health of China clarifies the edible function of gold foil.