I think you're right, people in third world countries use lots of aluminum in their cookware (Thailand, while not being third world) is a good example of a place which uses it a lot in cookery.

Just don't use aluminum citrus squeezers or cook your tomato sauce in aluminum pots (as their useful lifetimes will suffer, and the food might take on a weird taste.)

It would also seem that most of the danger from aluminum cookery, where there is such, comes from impurities in the recycled aluminum (lead, and other hazardous metals).

We use a lot of aluminum cookware in the US, too. Just take a look inside restaurant kitchens.

That's true, but aluminum cookware is not as pervasive as it is in 3rd world countries, also, I'm willing to bet, the aluminum in US cookware does not have as much in terms of impurities --not guarantees on cheap imported cookware though.

But the assertion was that aluminum itself is toxic, so the presence of impurities is irrelevant.

yes, because all these third world countries have a good record of keeping a good log on what's going on...

No but, cynically, they do provide the populations to study the effects of these things on people.

Maybe their populations are dying of something else before the effects would become clear.

Call me paranoid, but all "FDA approved" means is that I won't die right away

That's what "perfectly healthy" means too, though.

Aluminum has been consistently linked to Alzheimer's disease, and is toxic at those levels [1]:

> very small amounts of Al are needed to produce neurotoxicity and this criterion is satisfied through dietary Al intake

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21157018