Should We Really Be Cooking With Aluminum Foil?

Those who bake and cook often will know that lining baking trays with aluminum foil is almost second nature. Roasting potatoes, veggies, or baking cookies on some foil makes the clean-up nearly non-existent and is way less fiddly than parchment paper. You may be questioning whether you should be lining your sheet pans or air fryer baskets with foil or if it could harm our health, leading us to the key question: Is it okay to cook with aluminum foil?

The answer is that, generally speaking, it's safe to use for cooking. Aluminum foil can become unsafe at extreme temperatures, with a risk being posed above 400 Fahrenheit.  Research shows that aluminum can also become unsafe when paired with acidic foods like tomatoes, lemons, or vinegar. High temperatures and acidity can cause a risk of aluminum seeping into the food, but food scientists say that even then, the risks are quite low. If you want to minimize these, cooking on lower heat and not mixing certain foods with aluminum is a good start. You can also ditch the aluminum foil altogether, but you should know that you're already consuming aluminum daily.

Aluminum is a metal that's found in the air, water, and food. It is naturally found in many fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy products, along with traces found in food additives like preservatives and thickeners. U.S. citizens consume an average of 7 to 9 milligrams of aluminum daily in their food, with only about 4% of ingested aluminum coming from cooking utensils like aluminum foil. Even though we ingest aluminum daily, our bodies can expel such small amounts, with this metal working its way through our bodies quickly.

Aluminum is also present in cosmetic products, medication, and deodorants, making it hard to avoid in everyday life. While the amounts of aluminum ingested by healthy individuals pose minimal risks, individuals with kidney disease or similar issues could be negatively impacted. Those people may store more aluminum in their bodies due to issues with expelling excess amounts. By the sounds of it, choosing to cook with aluminum foil or not might just come down to a matter of convenience.