Helen:
I don't think you are gonna get sick eating gold leaf. Metallic gold is insoluble without subjecting it to aquia regia, which is a 70 percent mixture of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids. Your stomach has only a very diluted hydrochloric acid in it.
What's dangerous is the gold salts that result from chemicaly bonding gold to a halide of one form or another. These are soluble and can get into your system.
I did some googling and found a statement to exactly this effect; I also ran across a reference to fulminate of gold, which, like fulminate of mercury, is explosive.
I went to a dinner party many years ago where the dessert was ice cream wrapped in gold foil. I was sitting there figuring out a way to peel the foil off when I realized the other, more sophisticated, guests were chomping away. I am almost certain that it was at this party that I had goldwasser for the first and only time.
There isn't much gold in gold leaf. Really REALLY thin! Gold is very malleable.
TEd
