Martha Stewart, Aluminum and Alzheimer's Disease

During today’s show Martha Stewart made it clear that, as a “domestic authority”, she believes that eating food which has been cooked in contact with aluminum significantly increases the risk of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. According to the information at the Alzheimer’s Association’s website there is no scientific evidence to establish this. Perhaps Ms. Stewart would like to qualify her views as a self declared domestic “authority”? If not, why shouldn’t we all avoid eating food which has come into contact with steel or any other substance, such as parchment paper? Hasn’t she heard about your mechanic who went mad after he ate three packs of parchment paper? Your remember him right? Some skeptics said that he went mad before he ate the paper, but all us Martha Stewart Living magazine readers - we all know the real story.

Incidentally, Martha has a new line of premium copper clad stainless steel cookware. IMAGINE THAT.

Celebrities have a habit of distorting the truth or creating outright untruths (LIES). Some metals, like lead, have long been proven to be hazardous, so electric kettles and tin cans no longer use lead based solder, and lead has been eliminated from indoor paints…

In the kitchen many cooks, including Martha Stewert, no doubt use a lot of aluminum foil for cooking and baking!! But she’s not competing with Alcoa or Reynolds with a Martha Stewert Non-alumionum food wrap or pie plate.

Matha Stewart, distort the truth and take advantage of her position for money, how dare you ? Where is your evidence that she would ever do such a thing…oh, you say she was imprisoned for just such a thing. Forget I brought it up.

Just one more celebrity exposing her ignorance.

We take the chance?
Let’s see and remember:
Ethanol doesn’t hurt engines-It’s good for the environment and energy independence.
Tobacco isn’t habit forming and does not cause cancer.
Global Climate change is not anthopolical.
Sadam has WMD
Debt doesn’t matter.
High Fructose Corn sugar is not harmful
Life Insurance is a waste of money
Make a fortune by flipping houses and leverage up.
Good time to buy Gold.
53% (100-47) will win the Presidency.

I have aluminum cookware, and I use it for boiling water or searing meats. I don’t put acidic foods like tomatoes in it. I am concerned about aluminum dissolution in acids. I don’t think it is wise to ingest dissolved metals no matter what studies may show. Of course, these days, I just heat the tomato sauce in the microwave. But I do have a stainless steel pot, too.

I have heard aluminum cookware linked to collitus.

I don’t have any aluminum cookware because I don’t like the performance of aluminum cookware - it’s carbon steel or cast iron for me (I’m a kitchen snob and like non-stick surfaces that I can use full heat on). But I have no problem cooking things like potato packets in aluminum foil. The idea that aluminum foil will give me Alzheimer’s or any other ailment is silly.

While they have found aluminum in higher doses in the brains of some Alzheimer’s patients, that’s a correlative result, and does not prove causation. And if you use antiperspirant or take antacids or drink tea or beer or water or eat baked goods, you’re ingesting a lot more aluminum than you’ll get from cooking in foil, and it flows right back out of you when you urinate, unless you have kidney problems.

And speaking of, they’ve also found that people with kidney failure, who cannot excrete aluminum and therefore have a lot more of it built up than the rest of us, do not have a higher incidence of Alzheimer’s than the general population.

Is there some reason why we now have multiple posts in this forum regarding Martha Stewart, and what she might or might not have recommended? I don’t see the connection between her program and this forum.

Hmmm…If there is a Martha Stewart forum…do you think that anyone is posting Click & Clack-related complaints in her forum?
Or is this forum the only one getting totally unrelated stuff posted?

One of the shows I heard today (they do something like 6 a day on XM) had Martha Stewart on as a guest host.

Oh, really?
I do sometimes listen to the old shows on XM, but I never heard the one featuring Ms. Stewart.
They are currently airing shows from 1999 on XM.

Don’t forget the risk from drinking your beer or soft drinks from aluminum cans then too…

This reminded me of our local cable company seeking to capitalize on the fear that cell phones could cause brain cancer. They ran an ad listing the benefits of their home phone service, and one of them was you that you don’t have to worry about health risks from cell phone use! They failed to mention that most people that have “land line” phones use cordless phones that operate on around the same frequency and often have higher powered transmitters than cell phones. They quietly pulled their ads after a week or so.

IIRC, the inside of aluminum cans aare covered with a polymer coating to prevent dissolution of the aluminum. Colas are acidic enough that they probably would dissolve aluminum.

Let’s remember that we’re now enjoying classic, I mean old, episodes of our beloved show. The Martha Stewart episode was from 2001.

A good friend of mine who owns a resturant that Matha frequents when vacationing in his area…says he is on speaking terms with Martha and. "Martha is a good tipper and attractive…"
Goes to show you …you can buy looks and friends with ill gotten monies. (insider trade in)

Why should I care about any of this? I came here to learn about cars, not pots & pans…

This is nothing new. I heard this link almost 20 years ago. But there have been studies that have said there isn’t a link. There may be truth to it…but the scientific community isn’t convinced.

" I came here to learn about cars, not pots & pans… "
@the same mountainbike–does this mean we can’t talk about removing the oil pan from an engine? I guess we shouldn’t talk about carburetors either–we used to refer to them as “pots”.
Maybe the memory problems of old geezers like me was that we fooled around with too many pots back in the days before fuel injection. I think 4 barrel pots may be more likely to cause alzheimer’s disease than 2 barrel pots–at any rate 4 barrel pots did cause more irritation.

Okay, okay.
The English, whose use of words I like, even use the term “pot” to refer to a cylinder. A “four pot engine” in England means a 4-banger. I often use the term that way myself.

I think the problem with us old geezers is that we used to chase the mercury around the kitchen floor when a thermometer broke.