Should You Avoid Aluminum Foil Because Of Alzheimer’s?

Many people avoid aluminum foil, aluminum pots, aluminum-containing anti-perspiring, etc. for one reason: Alzheimer’s. This feared link between aluminum and the development of Alzheimer’s is not recent. The speculation and warnings began in the 1960s and found their peak in the last few decades. Aluminum exposure plays a role in and may even cause Alzheimer’s disease.

Does Aluminum Cause Alzheimer’s?
You Get More Aluminum From Regular Food
Does Aluminum Foil Leach Aluminum Into Food?
What Foods Have the Most Aluminum, Naturally?
BPA in Plastic
Do Not ‘Steam-in-Bag’
Summary

Does Aluminum Cause Alzheimer’s?

Should you ditch your aluminum foil for plastic wrap? Should you avoid all aluminum products including antiperspirant that uses aluminum? It’s a persistent and troublesome claim that you should. And there is nothing to it.

The correlation between aluminum and Alzheimers has been thoroughly debunked by decades of research. The reason this all began is that scientists found that the brains of Alzheimer’s patients had high levels of aluminum. This caused the unwarranted public assumption that aluminum must play a role in the development of the disease.

The reason that Alzheimer’s patients had high levels of aluminum could have been because their brains were unable to filter out toxins like a normal healthy brain. Unusually high levels of aluminum built up in the brain not because of abnormally high exposure, but because of an abnormally low ability to deal with the toxin.

Aluminum is everywhere on this planet. It’s the third most common element on Earth. Eight percent of the mass of the Earth’s crust is aluminum. If our bodies could not deal with aluminum and it caused a fatal brain disease, we’d all be in big trouble.

However, it has been found that most of the aluminum found in those brains was laboratory contaminants. The labs were full of aluminum dust.

Later experiments found NO SIGNS of aluminum in 105 samples taken from the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. So, there may have been nothing to all this in the first place. Epidemiological studies have furthermore found no increased risk of Alzheimer’s in people who used aluminum-containing underarm deodorant or antacids with aluminum.

aluminum foil with kitchen shears / scissors

Can You Use Aluminum Foil to Sharpen Scissors?

You Get More Aluminum From Regular Food

Does your skin absorb aluminum from underarm deodorants? It does but in extremely minute quantities. You ingest more aluminum from a single typical meal (regardless of aluminum foil use) than from one use of aluminum-containing antiperspirant/deodorant.

Does Aluminum Foil Leach Aluminum Into Food?

You’re not here about antiperspirant, though, I know. You want to know whether aluminum gets into food from using aluminum foil. Even when you cook with aluminum foil, only extremely trace amounts find their way into your food.

Again, you get as much, or more aluminum from everyday exposure to the environment and from eating vegetables and drinking tea, as plants absorb the mineral from the ground as they grow. Although you get more aluminum inadvertently from natural exposure or a normal diet, the amounts are still very low and healthy kidneys are more than capable of eliminating it.

Different foods cooked in aluminum foil will have different levels of aluminum leached into them. Some foods will have none, or next to none, while others will can end up with close to twice the amount of aluminum as they started with. However, in all cases, the amounts of aluminum are extremely low and in order to ingest levels of aluminum that exceed the upper tolerable intake of aluminum from these foods, you would have to eat impossible amounts of it.

Most of the information concerning the “alarming” amounts of aluminum leached into food from foil fail to mention the very low absorption of aluminum, which is only o.1 to one percent.

What Foods Have the Most Aluminum, Naturally?

The amount of aluminum you ingest from food depends on the type of foods you eat. Cereals, vegetables, fruits, tea, coffee, wheat, and wheat‐based products contain the most aluminum. Unprocessed foods like fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat contain very little
aluminum.

Aluminum compounds are sometimes added to food products such as baking powder, food coloring, and anticaking agents. They are sometimes added to flour used for baked goods. Keep in mind that not all the aluminum consumed, though various compounds, is absorbed into the bloodstream. For example, while some antacids contain large amounts of the compound aluminum hydroxide, very little of this is absorbed. This is not to say that the amount of aluminum that we are exposed to in our diet is not concerning. These levels are increasing due to our modern habits. However, the use of aluminum foil is a drop in the bucket and, when not used excessively, should be of no additional concern compared to the amount of aluminum already present in the diet.

BPA in Plastic

You probably have more to fear from BPA in plastic wrap or plastic storage containers than from aluminum as studies have shown that it is present in the environment, in our bodies, and to some extent, in our food.

BPA or bisphenol A has been linked to endocrine disruption which could raise our risk of cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, and these findings are consistent. The good news is that most plastic wraps or ‘cling wrap’ and most plastic storage containers no longer contain BPA.

The bad news is that its common replacement, BPS or bisphenol-S, may be just as harmful.

You can mitigate most of the danger by not exposing plastics to high heat. Don’t reheat foods in plastic storage containers and do not use any type of plastic that is meant for cooking, whether plastic wrap or boil-in-bag products.

I didn’t mention aluminum cans. Sodas or other beverages in aluminum cans do not actually come into contact with aluminum. These cans have a plastic lining that, in the past, used BPA. Today, most cans do not but instead use alternatives. Whether those alternatives are a problem remains to be seen. As I explain here, there is no bisphenol A in plastic water bottles.

Do Not ‘Steam-in-Bag’

Many frozen vegetables come in ‘steam-in-bag’ containers that you can just pop into the microwave and heat up without even opening the bag. Do not cook in these bags. Open the bag and pour out the contents to cook them as your normally would cook frozen vegetables.

This will eliminate most of the likelihood of BPA or BPA getting into your food from the container.

In summary, there is no Alzheimer’s danger from aluminum and all such claims are false and have been debunked thoroughly by scientific research. The Alzheimer’s Association backs this up.

Aluminum is naturally present in the environment and in our food and you are exposed to more of it from dust and from vegetables than you are from aluminum foil, antiperspirants, or antacids. While you may have your own reasons for avoiding any of these products, Alzheimer’s, and, indeed, general health, are not valid ones.

Key Summary Points For “Should You Avoid Aluminum Foil Because Of Alzheimer’s?”

Many people avoid aluminum foil, aluminum pots, aluminum-containing anti-perspiring, etc. because they think aluminum causes Alzheimer’s disease.
The claim that aluminum exposure causes Alzheimer’s disease has been thoroughly debunked by decades of research.
While Alzheimer’s patients have been found to have high levels of aluminum in their brains, this is likely due to their brains’ inability to filter out toxins, not due to abnormally high exposure to the metal.
Aluminum is ubiquitous in the environment and our diets, and healthy kidneys can eliminate it effectively.
Even when cooking with aluminum foil, only trace amounts of aluminum make their way into food.
You actually get more aluminum from everyday exposure and a normal diet than from using aluminum foil.
Foods like cereals, vegetables, fruits, tea, coffee, wheat, and wheat-based products contain the most naturally-occurring aluminum.
Unprocessed foods like fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat contain very little.
You should be more concerned about BPA and its replacements in plastic wrap and containers than about aluminum. BPA has been linked to various health issues, while the claims about aluminum and Alzheimer’s have been debunked.
To decrease the danger from these plastics, avoid exposing them to high heat and do not use “steam-in-bag” products in the microwave.