Thermowell Pots and Alumunim

[RobbiQuest]

Well, here's a topic that's probably only been keeping me up at nights. :-)

Someone made a post (Ha, I think) recently about aluminum cookware being bad for the health. That's been bothering me because I really look forward to using my T-Well pots (which are aluminum.) I found several posts that seemed to me to be more antedotal than fact and they all said aluminum cookware is safe, but it wasn't until an article I just found today that convinced me.

The article is from the CDC website that addresses the matter Here's their words, verbatim:

"Exposure to the low levels of aluminum that are naturally present in food and water and the forms of aluminum present in dirt and aluminum cookware is generally not harmful. The best way to reduce exposure to aluminum is to avoid taking large quantities of soluble forms of aluminum such as aluminum-containing antacids and buffered aspirin."

[url="http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts22.html"]http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts22.html[/url]

The post about being careful to not over-salt your food when cooking in aluminum is correct, but that's because it causes the aluminum to pit. I guess you could say that it's harder on the pot than the person.

So I guess we can all rest easy on using our Thermowell pots after all (phew!!!!)

t.

[ha_asfan]

Thank You RobbieQuest ! I have been overly concerned about using the aluminum but once the thought is embedded....hard to disengage. I'm happier knowing my deoderant is more dangerous than my cooksware.

[chipperhiker]

Yeah Tura!!

We all take enough real risks everyday (like getting behind the wheel of a car) to be keeping ourselves up at night worrying about aluminum cookware!

Thank you for putting this urban legend to rest.

-Jenn

[annnt]

Thanks for this Tura. I have been wanting to try some tomatoee dishes in the Thermowell. Now I can guilt free - well almost. (It is still hard to totally escape from the nervous feeling about cooking in aluminum though. Because in the back of my mind, I'm wondering "is there a cumulative effect?")
Ann
ps But I hope it won't keep me up at night - enough other things do that!

[Todd W. White]

I looked into this when we got our CHAMBERS and found out what Tura did - that the cookware is not nearly as dangerous as people once thought.

One thing, though - we don't cook any acidic dishes in the aluminum pots. They pick up some of the taste of the metal, albeit small, and alters the tatse of the food. For this reason, I am trying to locate (getting closer) a large stainless steel pot that will replace the large aluminum kettle. I'll let folks know when I am successful in my quest...

[stoveman]

Aluminium cookware. I don't know what to beleive. All I can do is tell a true story. My Aunt passed away a few years back. She died from Alzheimer's. It has been found that Alzheimer patients have a larger than normal amount of Aluminium in their brain cells. No one can explain this.


Well, We began clearing out her house. When we pulled out all her cookware that she had used for the last 60 years, Here is what we found. No stainless steel or cast iron. ALL pots, pans and other cooking utensils were made of Aluminium.

Randie and I cook in stainless steel and cast iron.

[lowracer]

Before you discard those aluminum pots, make sure you understand the difference between correlation and causation.

In 40 years of continuous study of the problem, there has never been a single scientific study to prove that cooking with aluminum pots causes Alzheimers. This is from alzheimers.org.

If there was even the remotest chance of aluminum pots being the cause of Alzheimers, don't you think the Alzheimer's Disease Education and Referral Center would advise against cooking with them?

I for one would love to cook on my chambers with Aluminum pots. Now if I could just find some!

[chipperhiker]

You can be sure that there are plenty of Alzheimer patients out there that never cooked in aluminum, either.

[lowracer]

Another thing to ponder, though it wasn't formally named and characterized as a disease until the early 1900's, Alzheimer's has been around since at least Roman times, and most likely a lot earlier.

The element aluminum, however, was not discovered in nature until 1821. It was extremely difficult to extract from bauxite ore and so was more rare and more valuable than gold or platinum. Not until the 1890's did chemists learn to extract aluminum metal in sufficient quantities, and not until after WWI did industry produce enough of the metal to manufacture cookware.

[annnt]

What a fountain of knowledge this discussion board brings forth!