There's Gold in Them Thar Meals!

The headline caused me to do a double take: Restaurant to Stop Putting Gold in Food. I wouldn't exactly call what I've sometimes found in my Happy Meals gold, so on reading further I discovered that to get my daily dose of gold I'll have to go to Vietnam.

Hanoi's Kim Ngan Thien, or Golden Feast restaurant, serves up its dishes embellished with a unique seasoning--gold. In some Asian nations, gold is considered to have restorative and therapeutic value. You might think of the Golden Feast as something like a health food restaurant. In Economics 101, students are taught that product differentiation--the art of creating a unique product that consumers will desire--is one of the keys to business success. Maybe the Golden Feast will end up as a Harvard MBA case study of successful product differentiation. The restaurant has been serving about 100 diners daily since its opening last January.

Unfortunately for hungry customers with an appetite for gold dust, the government has ordered the restaurant to hold back that sparkly sprinkle for now. The effects on consumer health from consuming gold, even the small amounts served by the Golden Feast, needs to be established. Until then, diners will have to be satisfied with soy sauce. And the Golden Feast will have to give up the 15 percent surcharge on gold. As we say in economics, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

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