What you need to know about glitter

It’s old. Very, very old.

I assumed that glitter was invented a while within the Victorian era, probably for the sole objective of gaudying-up sentimental greeting cards. But glitter is far older than I ever guessed.

A while around forty,000 B.C., ancient people started dusting sparkly crushed minerals over their cave paintings. As early as the sixth century A.D., Mayans were adding glitter made of mica to their temple partitions, in response to National Geographic. And in 2010, the BBC reported that reflective material was discovered blended in with what’s believed to be the residue of 50,000-year-old Neanderthal cosmetics.

It’s not made of metal.

Aluminum, possibly tin: That’s what I assumed glitter was made of. Nope. Fashionable glitter was invented in 1934 in New Jersey, of all places, when American machinist Henry Ruschmann figured out a strategy to grind plastic into glitter. Finally the raw materials developed into polyester film layered with coloring and reflective material «fed via a rotary knife reducing system … kind of a mixture of a paper shredder and a wood chipper,» in response to glitter producer Joe Coburn. Before that, glitter was made of glass. Not something you’d want to eat.

It’s everywhere.

Tons of glitter are produced every year (literally, tons). There are 20,000 types of glitter available from pioneer glitter-makers Meadowbrook Inventions alone, ranging from the run-of-the-mill craft glitter you bear in mind from kindergarten to «particular effects» glitter for industrial applications. It can be as tremendous as mud or as chunky as confetti. As glitter manufacturer Coburn remarked on Reddit in 2014, an order of «2 tons a month is a really small dimension

You may see a glitter-making machine in motion here — it’s disturbingly efficient at reducing thin sheets of polyester film into gleaming little grains. Glitter isn’t biodegradable and most of the people don’t recycle it. So it’s not going anywhere.

You can eat it.

Hold on! You possibly can’t eat just any glitter. It must be edible glitter, a hip new condiment that gained fame on Instagram in 2017. Because the first twinkling pictures showed up, it’s made an appearance on everything from donuts to bagels to pizza.

Within the curiosity of great academic research, I imagine it’s essential that I examine and consume edible glitter. What is it made of? When was it invented? Most important of all, what would occur if someone baked it right into a cake and ate it?