Aluminum Leaching during Food Preparation and Storage

Abstract

Aluminum (Al) is extensively used in many industrial sectors, including those dealing with transportation, electricity, machinery, equipment, food processing, packaging, storage, and a wide range of home appliances. Fruits and vegetables, which might have varied quantities depending on the plant's capacity to absorb Al, are usually the main dietary exposure sources. Depending on a variety of variables, such as cooking temperature, technique of cooking, and type of additives used, using Al utensils leads to a significant addition of the metal to the diet.This research focuses on studying the effect of food pH, cooking time and storage period on the leaching of Al from three cooking utensils (high quality aluminum pot, low quality aluminum pot and clay pot) into cooked organic tomato and spinach. The results demonstrated that the leaching of Al from pots of low-quality aluminum was greater than that of the other pots recording 5.94 and 13.09 mg Al/kg for tomato and spinach samples cooked in low quality aluminum pots, respectively, followed by high quality aluminum pots cooked tomato and spinach samples reaching 4.59 and 8.94 mg/kg, respectively after 30min of cooking. On the other hand, the clay cooked tomato and spinach samples recorded the lowest (Al) content reaching 1.33 and 5.44 mg/kg, respectively after 30min of cooking.