For a long time, aluminum foil has been a kitchen staple. Open up anyone’s utility drawer and you’re bound to find a roll of the silver thinly printed metal. Why? Because it is extremely useful and effective for many kitchen and household tasks.
Foil is often used to cover your casserole and other oven-ready dishes. But now research is showing that if you cook with aluminum foil, you could be exposing yourself to some pretty serious health risks.
In the article below, we will present you with the facts on cooking with aluminum foil. Learn what can happen and then make the decision to use it or not for yourself. But the research is pretty clear…
Simply put, if you cook with aluminum foil, you are playing with your health.
The first thing you need to know is that aluminum is bad for your brain. It is a neurotoxic heavy metal that has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease for years.
Exposing yourself to this metal can lead to mental decline. Prepare to suffer in terms of coordination, bodily control, memory, and balance. Sadly, many who suffer from poisoning with this neurotoxin, the damage is permanent. You could experience gaps in memory that can create a divide between you and your loved ones if this chemical does the worst it can.
Besides damaging your brain, cooking with aluminum foil can also negatively affect your bones. This metal can build-up inside your bones. This is bad because it competes with calcium for space inside your bones and often wins out over the essential mineral. Although an aluminum skeletal frame sounds like something from science fiction, are bodies are made for fact – not fiction. So, it simply won’t work well for us. You need calcium to prevent your bones from breaking in a fall.
From here on out, the risk of cooking with aluminum continues to grow. It is also bad for your lungs. Breathing in aluminum particles has been proven to lead to respiratory problems, like pulmonary fibrosis. Even if you grill with aluminum foil, you could be breathing in these particles and slowly destroying your lungs.
Aluminum cans have long been hailed as being risky. But for some reason, tin foil was overlooked for years. No longer…
If you accidentally ingest aluminum flakes, you risk these problems. While you’re not eating a ball of rolled up foil, when you cook with aluminum at high temperatures, parts of the metal are going into your food. High temperatures can create cracks in the metal causes particles to break off into your food.
Even if the minuscule pieces don’t break off, chemical leeching of aluminum can happen if you cook with certain spices or use lemons.
Dr Essam Zubaidy, a chemical engineering researcher at the American University of Sharjah, discovered that just one meal cooked with tin foil can leach 400 mg of aluminum.
“The higher the temperature, the more the leaching. Foil is not suitable for cooking and is not suitable for using with vegetables like tomatoes, citrus juice or spices.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) of 2 mg/kg body weight for aluminium. This PTWI applies to all aluminium compounds in food, including food additives. The recommendation is based on a no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) of 30 mg/kg body weight per day, with the application of a safety factor of 100.
For adults, the estimated mean dietary exposure to aluminium-containing food additives from cereals and cereal-based products can reach up to the PTWI. However, for children, estimates of dietary exposure to aluminium-containing food additives, including high dietary exposures (e.g., 90th or 95th percentile), can exceed the PTWI by up to 2-fold.
The takeaway: If you cook with aluminum, you’re risking your health.
