Wearing My Tin Hat Again

Which is fine as long as I don't eat it

Many of you will know that when in the darkest winter of early 2020 I began to write my book I initially considered producing some sort of reference guide on aluminium. I soon gave up on this idea preferring to write my philosophy on living in The Aluminium Age (spelt aluminum to please the American publisher).

However, writing this substack has informed me that a reference guide on aluminium would also have been a good idea as many seek simple informed advice on living in the aluminium age. I am not going to write this reference guide by the way but I will try to cover such information in posts on Dr’s Newsletter. So today’s musing is focussed upon the use of aluminium foil (we used to call it tin foil) in everyday life. I have written about this in my book and just to prove the point I am copying an extract from my book below.

If I may digress with a related story. Late one morning, in spring 2000 I think, I received a telephone call from someone in a bar in Sydney, Australia. The caller identified himself as being the boss of a small sports drink company called Musashi. He explained to me that in their product advertising, they made a great deal about not using packaging such as long-life Tetra Pak to avoid the possibility of contamination of their sports drinks by aluminium. Well, as you might imagine Tetra Pak did not take kindly to this form of advertising and were taking Musashi to court, a process that could inevitably lead to bankruptcy for Musashi. I suggested that they send me all the science that Tetra Pak was relying upon to prove that their packaging did not contaminate products with aluminium. It did not take me long to use Tetra Pak’s own internal product data, as supplied to me by Musashi, to prove that Tetra Pak was wrong. My first and, as yet, only trip to Australia saw me spend several days in the federal court without even being brought to the witness stand. Tetra Pak did not wish to risk putting me on the stand to defend my report. I am pleased to say that Musashi remains to this day a small, successful sports nutrition company. Tetra Pak on the other hand continues to use their aluminium-based packaging without any concessions towards its propensity to contaminate the products within. My advice is to avoid all products contained within long-life Tetra Pak packaging.       

I stick by this advice for all aluminium-based packaging where there is the likelihood that the stored product will come into direct contact with aluminium foil. Packaging companies will explain that while their material does include a layer of aluminium foil the stored product is prevented from coming into contact with the foil by some form of essentially plastic layer. Unfortunately, myriad examples of independent peer-reviewed published science do not support this contention. Over decades of experience I cannot recall a single study in which the authors concluded that stored product was not contaminated by aluminium. If you know of one then please let me know. Just so you know that I am not making this up, take a look at this recent paper showing the contamination of canned drinks by aluminium. Further, I am not the only person taking this issue seriously. You can actually read about how scientists and industry are trying to overcome serious product contamination by aluminium.

I am advocating that wherever and whenever possible you should avoid ingesting any non-solid product that is presented (stored) in aluminium-based packaging. I do not find this difficult or onerous, it is a matter of choice. Granted, there may be situations where there is no choice. These are the situations that are rendered much less serious by regular drinking of a silicon-rich mineral water.

I am not advocating that you make your life impossible by not using aluminium foil, for example in the kitchen. Aluminium foil is exactly what it says on the tin. There is no so-called protective layer. You must not use foil in any way whereby contact with the product results in the corrosion of the foil surface. This corrosion, which may simply appear as a discolouration following cooking for example, tells you immediately that some degree of product contamination has taken place. Cooking with aluminium foil has become a way of life almost globally. There have been many scientific papers examining this issue and in the main they conclude that cooking anything in aluminium foil should be avoided. For a recent example of such that coincidentally also identifies the global nature of this problem you can read this recent paper on roasting catfish in aluminium foil.

I know that many people wish to lower their everyday exposure to aluminium while not everyone is sold on the philosophy of silicon-rich natural waters. The latter is your best defence if you can make this part of your everyday life. However, the former is achievable if you think twice about consuming too much of (a product) and too many products packaged (and hence stored) in tin foil. Wear the hat instead!