Lead is probably out of the question. It has a much darker color than
other metals. In its metallic form, lead shouldn't have much of any
flavor (some compounds such as lead (II) acetate do taste sweet and
were used for centuries as sweetening agents). To test if the metal is
aluminum, you could place a piece of foil in some copper(ii) sulfate.
The aluminum will undergo a substitution reaction with the copper, and
a brownish red powder (metallic copper) will form on the surface of
the foil. As for trace quantities of contaminating metals, that might
be a bit more difficult to detect.
On Jan 18, 6:13 pm, Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I got some sweets from India, kaju barfi (crushed almond and milk
> solids basically)... they're covered in "edible silver foil".
> According to wikipedia there have been reported cases of aluminum, and
> even silver contaminated with cadmium. I was also thinking it could
> also be lead, since it has a sweet flavor (from what I've read).
>
> http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FzyLdAEtyP4J:en....
>
> So what would the easy way to test these metal coatings be? Burn some
> in front of a spectrometer? Some chemical test?
>
> --
> Nathan McCorkle
> Rochester Institute of Technology
> College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics
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