From: Steven Eiger (eiger@montana.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 16 1999 - 14:55:53 PDT
Message-Id: <l03102800b42e98e23f6a@[153.90.236.25]> Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 15:55:53 -0600 From: Steven Eiger <eiger@montana.edu> Subject: Re: Re: pinhole Aluminum on my Mind
Neil, I don't really know what might be best, and of course there is so
much individual variation, eg. a person that ought to get more iron might
benifit from cooking in a iron skillet. Before Geritol, women used to
drink rusty water. I have an interesting story about storing water in
glass. Someone once gave me an antique water bottle which I am convinced
made the water taste sweeter and better; later I found out that lead tastes
sweet and that is why children like it. My unfounded guess is that we are
just picking up trace amounts of metal from these pots, and not much is
known about how these might affect us. We do need trace amounts of certain
metals. It seems to me that nutrition is a very young science and it will
be some time before we get believable answers to apply to these questions.
For now I am going to focus on what and how much I put in the pot and not
worry too much about what the pot contributes. While this is a good
example of burying my head in the sand regarding metal consumption, I have
an excuse of past excessive lead consumption to blame it on. I only rarely
cook on materials other than teflon or stainless steel which ought to be in
the more inert and unleachable category relative to glass, which ceramic
glaze is too. Clay pots are porous so can harbor small items for later
use; I really do not have a clue on what might be best. This might make a
good set of experiments for students, boiling water of different acidities
for cerain times and seeing what comes out. Unfortunately a flame
photometer or something else sensitive would be needed to pick up the
metals, but it has already been done for lead. Brandy stored in leaded
glass or pewter decanters for years has a healthy dose lead present.
After writing the above I checked out PubMed
http://www3.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
There were many references to aluminum in things as a result of storage,
and of bad things aluminum might do, eg. cause Parkinson's disease, but in
this case the people were eating aluminum containg antacids. It seems as
if aluminum coming off of pots and storage vessels is usually well within
tolerable limits. I did not check out other metals.
>How about cooking in clay pots like our foreberers did--being care of the
>glaze we use. Also, how about using glass or ceramics for cookware and avoid
>metals altogether?
>Neil Fetter
>
Steven Eiger, Ph.D.
Departments of Biology and the WWAMI Medical Education Program
Montana State University - Bozeman
Bozeman, MT 59717-3460
Voice: (406) 994-5672
E-mail: eiger@montana.edu
FAX: (406) 994-3190
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