What is "vark"

Vark \Vark\, n. [D. varken a pig.] (Zo["o]l.) The bush hog, or boshvark.

Vark, varak , , Silver Leaves (चाँदी का वर्क) or varaka is any foil composed of a pure metal, typically silver, sometimes gold, used for garnishing sweets in South Asian cuisine. The silver is edible, though flavorless. Varak is made by pounding silver into a sheet a few micrometres ( µ ) thick (0.2 micron to 0.8 micron ), and backed with paper for support; this paper is peeled away before use. It is extremely brittle and breaks into smaller pieces if touched. 0.2 micron's extra thin leaves get stuck on hand and then it vanished due to excessively low thickness (due to thickness close to inter-atomic distance). Vark sheets are laid or rolled over some South Asian sweets. Edible silver and gold foils on sweets, confectionery and desserts is not unique to the Indian subcontinent; other regions such as Japan and Europe have long used precious metal foils as food cover and additive, including specialty drinks such as Danziger Goldwasser.It is also commonly used in India as coating on dry fruits (such as almonds, cashews, and dates), and in sugar balls, betel nuts, cardamom and other spices. Cardamom-coated sweets are very commonly present in the market. Concerns have been raised about the safety and ethical acceptability of Vark, as not all of it is pure silver, nor hygienically prepared, and the foil nowadays commonly is beaten between layers of ox-gut because it is easier to separate the silver leaf from animal tissue than to separate it from paper. It is considerable that some technologies evolved for the production of silver leaves i.e. in Russia, German, China and India . Technologies like beating over sheets of Black special treated paper, Polyester sheets coated with food grade Calcium powder are used instead of Ox-guts . Estimated consumption of Vark is 275 tons ( according to BWC- Beauty without cruelty data ) annually . Hindu and Jain religions care much about whether a food is vegetarian or not, thus the market of India has turned and converted into vegetarian processed silver leaves .

Vark is an Indian confectionery garnish.

Vark may also refer to:

• Vark, Afghanistan, village in Badakhshan Province in north-eastern Afghanistan
• Luisa Värk (born 1987), Estonian singer
• VARK, a model of learning styles, see Learning styles#Neil Fleming's VAK/VARK model
• (Aard)Vark, a build system based on Gosu (programming language) and Apache Ant