Kitchen Swaps to Reduce Aluminum Intake

Two years ago, riiiiight before Thanksgiving, we got test result confirmation that our daughter had a high level of aluminum in her system. Aluminum is known to be a risk factor for several bodily systems, particularly neurological, so we immediately began a new expedition to limit our family’s aluminum exposure. Thanksgiving season brings back the memories of that first year, trying to find swaps for annual traditions and daily standbys. I decided to write up the biggest changes we’ve made and share in case anyone else is looking to learn about this or would like ideas. :)  Any Amazon links are affiliate links, but I am only linking items that we personally use and repeatedly love. 

Here are our main kitchen swaps to reduce aluminum intake:

Reading labels:

A free and simple swap! I now read nutrition labels even more carefully and avoid anything that includes Sodium aluminum phosphate, Sodium aluminum sulfate, Sodium aluminosilicate, Aluminum potassium sulfate, Calcium aluminosilicate, etc. These are most commonly found in baking powder, boxed baking mixes, processed cheese, powdered coffee creamers, instant mixes, seasoning packets, and frozen dough.

Pots, pans, and baking sheets:

Most pots, pans, and baking sheets are made from aluminum. This is one of the easiest switches to make! High temperatures increase aluminum leaching, and the longer the food is in contact with aluminum at high heat, the more leaching occurs. We have switched to stainless steel and love the simplicity of them. When switching over gradually on a budget, leave baking sheets and pizza pans for last, because lining aluminum pans with parchment paper also works. For frying pans, we switched to using our cast iron pans exclusively. 

Stock pots: https://amzn.to/3M4H1VH

Frying pans: https://amzn.to/48uZMub

Baking sheets: https://amzn.to/488Y8wT 

Pizza pans: https://amzn.to/3KkeURQ

Aluminum foil:

Aluminum foil is one of those things that you don’t realize how much you use it until you ditch it.

Instead of lining baking sheets with foil, you can coat them with oil (avocado, ghee, tallow, etc). For the messiest meals that stick the worst, you can line them with parchment paper (https://amzn.to/3XdgKac). Instead of cooking food in foil on the grill, we use a cast iron pan inside the grill. Instead of wrapping leftovers in foil, we use glass containers https://amzn.to/4a5tZ4b.

Thanksgiving specific: instead of using rolls of foil as a rack on the bottom of your dish, you can lift the turkey up off the bottom of the dish with large onion and apple chunks. To avoid covering the turkey in foil, you can cover it with soaked cheesecloth (https://amzn.to/483daEk). I normally melt a bowl of butter or ghee, soak the cheesecloth in it, and then drape it over the turkey partway through baking. This keeps the turkey from burning while also seeping butter into it. However, for special occasions like holidays, it’s better to remember, “everything in moderation”, including worrying about details like this. I have fun finding tweaks to keep troubleshooting as I think of things, but if it feels overwhelming, it’s better to let it go and focus on the more important things. <3  

Canned food:

Now we mostly use (1) frozen produce (2) cook beans from scratch in the instant pot (3) make soup from scratch (4) tomato sauce in cartons and (5) diced fresh tomatoes instead of canned. One of our exceptions is canned pumpkin around the holidays. Salty and acidic foods (like tomatoes) increase the rate of aluminum that leaches into the food. 

Rice Cooker:

Our rice cooker had an aluminum inner cooking pot, so we switched to a small instant pot with a stainless steel inner cooking pot: https://amzn.to/49BCAvk  It ended up being great to have a smaller instant pot in addition to our larger one since I also use them for quinoa, oatmeal, beans, slow cooking, or sauteing and regularly use both at at the same time.

Water:

We switched to a ProOne gravity, countertop water filter for drinking water. Their filters remove contaminants (like microplastics, lead, and aluminum) while allowing essential minerals to pass through. We bought our water system during ProOne’s annual Black Friday sale when they are 40-50% off all week. https://prooneusa.com/product/big-plus/

Those have been our biggest changes in our kitchen so far to reduce aluminum intake! I’m really pleased with how fun it’s been to learn safer habits and grow in knowledge, so maybe this will be interesting to someone else out there too. :) 

Happy Thanksgiving week!