Myths and environmental impact of foil

Aluminum foil is one of those kitchen staples that most of us use without thinking twice about it. There are a few reasons that you might want to give a bit more thought to how you use and how you dispose of this handy standby. Could AI help you do more of what you love? Workdayay is the AI platform for HR and finance that actually knows your business. We help you handle the have to dos so you can focus on the can't wait to dos. It's a new Workday. Hi, this is Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. I am always looking for ways to elevate our daily rituals. and the Kohler Smart tooilet is proof that design changes everything. It's this stunning sculptural piece that feels like quiet luxury for your bathroom. It totally transforms your daily ritual into something elevated with customizable cleansing and touchs screen controls It's functional art that makes your space feel cleaner and more intentional. A modern home deserves a modern toilet Experience the difference of Kohler smart toilets. Find more at Khler. com Hello, I'm Monica Reingel, and you're listening to the Nutrition Diva podcast, a show where we take a closer look at the latest nutrition news, trends and research and answer your food and nutrition questions And today, I'm going to tackle a bunch of questions all relating to cooking or storing food in aluminum foil and whether this is safe For example, Laura wrote to ask Are there any concerns about cooking on aluminum foil I heard a chef say that they don't cook directly on the foil. Instead, they put a piece of parchment paper over the foil. And they never specified why. I'm curious if there are any health concerns And the short answer is Yes, there are some concerns But the real question is whether those concerns are justified. So let's take a look at what happens when aluminum foil comes into direct contact with your food But first, a fun fact. You may still sometimes hear people refer to aluminum foil as tin foil And that's because once upon a time, Foil was made from actual tin, and the term has stuck, even though tin hasn't been used in household foil in over a hundred years Today's foil is mostly aluminum, with tiny amounts of other metals such as iron per or chromium, which are added to increase the strength flexibility and to make the foil more resistant to corrosion Back to Laura's question The main concern with cooking food in foil is that some of that aluminum might leach or migrate into the food And this is a possibility, especially if the food is acidic or very salty High temperatures and longer cooking times can also increase leaching It's not likely to be as much of a concern if you're using foil to cover a casserole or line a baking sheet or perhaps heat up some dinner rolls And this leaching phenomenon is not unique to foil either when we cook tomato sauce and a cast iron pot, for example, some iron may leach into the sauce. Sometimes that's actually viewed as a nutritional bonus. Aluminum is different from iron in an important way. Iiron is an essential nutrient Aluminum is not We don't need aluminum for any known biological function And at very high exposures, aluminum could be potentially harmful But The amount of aluminum that most of us encounter in our daily lives is nowhere near that high Aluminum is naturally present in soil and water. So small amounts of it can show up in plant foods and in drinking water It can also be present in things like baking powder or antiacids While this is not generally thought to be a problem, there are some aluminum free baking powders for people who would prefer to avoid that. And that might be important for people with impaired kidney function, for example, because the kidneys are involved in clearing aluminum from our bodies Toxicologists and public health experts do not consider aluminum exposure to be a concern for the average person. Nonetheless, we should talk about the elephant in the kitchen has been long running speculation about aluminum being a potential contributor to Alzheimer's disease Some observational studies have found associations between higher aluminum exposure and Alzheimer's risk And in those that found a link The higher exposures were often related to contaminated drinking water or occupational exposure in the most recent meta analysis of over fifty studies Roughly half of them found a link, half found no association, or even an inverse association, meaning that aluminum exposure was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease So in other words It is not all that clear whether or not there's any relationship here With all of that said, however, if minimizing your exposure were a priority thenen Peplacing a sheet of parchment paper between the foil and the food would, presumably reduce the possibility of any aluminum transfer You'll find parchment paper in the same aisle that you'd find the aluminum foil But were to the wise Wax paper is not the same thing as parchment paper, even though it looks somewhat similar And you shouldn't put wax paper in the oven or under high heat Parchment paper can be used on its own in the oven, by the way It can't withstand exposure to direct flame. So if you're grilling, you would definitely need the foil around that parchment paper to protect it from igniting just as a personal note I grill salmon in foil packets at least once a week. I do not bother with parchment paper, but if you want to It's a reasonable low effort step Especially if you're cooking more acidic foods Now let's move on to George's question, which is also about foil. She wrote, I've heard that when cooking with foil, the dull side should always be toward the food and the shiny side toward the heat. Why is that The short answer is It absolutely does not matter, at least not for ordinary aluminum foil. The shiny side and the dull side are simply a result of how foil is manufactured. Aluminum gets rolled into very thin sheets, and during the final rolling step Two sheets are rolled together The sides that come into contact with the rollers come out shinier and the sides that are touching each other come out duller That's it It's not a safety feature. It's not a heat reflection thing And it's not about which side is safer to put next to the food for regular foil You can use either side Your baked potato, your sheet paned vegetables, your foil packet dinner will not know the difference Now the one exception to that is non stick foil One side of that is treated with a coating that releases food more easily. And in that case package should tell you which side is meant to touch the food Now nonstick foil may prevent food from sticking to the foil, but it doesn't necessarily eliminate leaching But here, the parchment paper trick would do double duty because it would prevent the sticking and prevent the leaching If you're using parchment paper, you can probably skip the more expensive non stick foil So next, I want to tackle Hannah's question about water packaged in aluminum bottles and cans , you know that feeling when your creative clicks, when that social post sends engagement through the roof? when your outside of the box campaign hits ROI positive, when a personalized home page turns prospects into customers. It's utter marketing bliss. Contentfulful helps you create tailored omnich channel experiences without working overtime No stress, no limits, only possibilities. 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Get your closet ready for a summer in motion. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores Plastic water bottles have fallen from favor lately, both because of the environmental impact of that single use plastic as well as the microplastics that we ingest from them. Not surprisingly, you can now buy water in single use aluminum cans and bottles instead Is leaching likely to be an issue here Well, the good news is that most aluminum beverage containers are lined with some kind of coating to prevent corrosion, to preserve the taste of the beverage and to keep the liquid from reacting with the metal The potential bad news is that those linings are often polymer based. And that means that aluminum cans and bottles are not necessarily a completely plastic free option. And while aluminum is recyclable It is also energy intensive to produce in the first place Single use aluminum may be better than single use plastic in some ways, but it is still single use packaging. If you can use a refillable stainless steel or glass water bottle, that is probably the best solution both from a health and a waste standpoint Speaking of single use aluminum We should probably circle back to foil Aluminum foil is also recyclable. patch is that most recyclers reject materials with food residue