The Great Aluminum Fairy Tale

However, the makers of the more traditional steel, tin and copper pans were unhappy. As sales of Aluminum went up, their sales went down. Then, while testing these upstart pans, one of them found a weakness. If you cooked high-acid foods in the new aluminum pans, the food got a "metallic" flavor. Could this represent a danger to the consumer?

So they called in their medical experts. Could the users of aluminum pans be poisoning themselves?

"Sorry, no," said the medical experts. "Aluminum is the most common metal on the Earth's surface. It's in every vegetable and fruit we eat. A little aluminum in a pan isn't going to hurt anyone."

The Steel, Tin, and Copper men were unhappy with this opinion. Surely there was something they could do to fight back. They puzzled and puzzled and puzzled until their puzzlers were sore.

"Aha!" one of them exclaimed. "We don't have to prove that aluminum is dangerous, we just need to make people think it's dangerous. Let's start a whispering campaign!"

So they hired pamphleteer Howard J. Force to start their campaign. He published Poisons Formed by Aluminum Cooking Utensils and Are You Heading for the Last Round-Up? and he made many people scared about using Aluminum. Sales of Steel, Copper and Tin began to recover.

Then Rudolf Valentino died of a perforated ulcer. In a stroke of genius, the Tin, Copper and Steel men put out a rumor that he had been killed by food cooked in Aluminum pots. Aluminum gained a shadow of fear which it was never to shed.  Clearly, H. Force was with them.

Still, Aluminum grew more and more popular, and gradually became the standard for restaurant cookware. Yet unfounded rumors of the unhealthfulness of Aluminum were never far behind. When the new new pans came out, with Teflon, the rumors grew and multiplied.

Then a study was published that seemed to show large deposits of aluminum in the brains of Alzheimer's victims. Even though the study was later retracted as being based on contaminated samples, the damage was done.

"Don't use aluminum pans or aluminum oxide deodorant!" the rumors cried. "You'll get Alzheimer's!"

The Steel, Copper and Tin men laugh in their graves. For even today, mothers whisper of the dangers of Aluminum to their children, along with the Bogey Man and the Big Bad Wolf.

(thanks to snopes.com for information)