Cooking in aluminum

upnorth

upnorth

Joined
Nov 25, 2006
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Do you guys have any qualms about cooking and eating out of aluminum pots ?
 
Aluminum, stainless steel, carbon steel, titanium .All are available . Claims about aluminum were never proven [Alzheimer] but you can dissolves some of the Al especially when cooking acid foods. I've got nice SS pots but there are many who cook tomato sauce in Al. Maybe they can tell you like many Italians !
 
Stainless steel all the way in my kitchen (Faberware). I have some aluminum stuff that has been "retired" to possible camping use, but in general I do not use those any more. But I haven't tossed them either.
 
I just decided to go with stainless steel - bit heavier, but peace of mind was a consideration in deciding. Feel better with stainless over an open fire or on coals.
 
For everyday use - I'd be concerned. For camping pots - no problem. (I don't go camping enough to ingest a lot of aluminum or often enough to make me happy :-(
 
If I were stranded on a desert island and found an aluminum cooking pot (and it was the only one available) then I would use it. Otherwise, it's SS, cast iron, glass or Ti......
 
No qualms at all

I have some great aluminum Pressure Cookers
For camping, I have local purchased 2 quart aluminum pots are as light as titanium double the size and a fraction of the price
 
unimogbert said:
For everyday use - I'd be concerned. For camping pots - no problem. (I don't go camping enough to ingest a lot of aluminum or often enough to make me happy :-(
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Lots of restaurants use commercial grade hard anodized aluminum. No concern.
 
I use a Sigg pot that's aluminum with a stainless lining. I cook lots of tomato heavy dishes, so it's the best of both worlds. But, if it's all that is available, I have no issues using aluminum.
 
I use aluminum for my hiking pot, I never found an actual source for the claims against it. I was looking at Ti but was worried it would break on me or my food would burn. Not sure if my own concerns were legitimate.
 
use the material best suited for what you need to do. I don't worry at all about using raw aluminum any more that I'd worry about dodgy Ti alloys from China or even "stainless" that might have a little extra sumthin-sumthin in it. Unless you have a condition where you need to avoid a certain material, or it does something to your food you don't like, its not that big of a deal. When someone comes up with a controlled study saying I should worry, then I might, but as long as the studies are "huh, thats a weird correlation" I got bigger things to worry about.
 
Aluminum is one of the most common elements on the planet, while nothing has been found that actually uses it for biological processes all known life has extremely high resistances to toxicity and efficient mechanisms for expelling it from both single cells and larger bodies.
Just eating fruit and veg is a cause of daily exposure.

On the other hand Tomato soup cooked in a stainless pot and left over night has levels of chromium and nickel above safe daily intake levels.
I personally prefer something life has been exposed to on a daily basis since its inception on earth and which we have biological processes to deal with, compared to things like Chromium which outside of rare incidents and areas is uncommon for us to be exposed too until we started mining and refining the stuff.

Officially Aluminum causing Alzheimer’s is a myth, with all studies done to prove a link failing to show any.
 
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For canoe camping I use aluminum hard anodised on the outside and non stick inside for easy clean up. I generally hate non stick except for a small omelette pan. The set is light, compact and quite voluminous. My mother used heavy aluminium pots my whole childhood so any damage is done! I look at those pots now they are much thinner in places.
So you can have light, safe, inexpensive cookware now.
 
No need to risk your health. I'll stay away from plastic and aluminum. Stainless food grade seems to be the best choice.
 
bore said:
No need to risk your health. I'll stay away from plastic and aluminum. Stainless food grade seems to be the best choice.
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Please cite the specific risks to one's health with aluminum cookware.
 
The thing is when using aluminum pots , especially with acid foods , you do get higher Al levels in the body. The question is does it harm.
Plastics certainly can be a problem. Polycarbonate contains BHA which is a hormone disruptor. The new substitute , Tritan has it's own problems. Plastics are now looked at for problems with other compounds ,not just the major ones .
 
Not to disparage anyone, but this is another one of those topics that comes up a couple times a year, and we all still have no new info on. Until someone gets some good controlled evidence, we are all just chasing the same smoke. Do the different materials preform differently? you bet, and I submit that it should be your deciding factor.
 
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