Many years ago (more than two decades, at least), Reader's Digest had a
story about a family whose children became, slowly, very ill.  I seem to
recall that at least one suffered brain damage.  The illness was lead
poisoning but it took considerable effort for the source of the poisoning
to be found.  The family lived in an ordinary, modern home in an ordinary
suburb.  It was eventually discovered that this family's practice of
drinking orange juice every morning with breakfast was the problem.  The
juice was served in a ceramic pitcher.  The acid in the juice leached the
lead out of the clay, so that the family was drinking, essentially,
dissolved lead.
 
Since then, a number of laws and regulations have been enacted to protect
consumers from this sort of danger.  If you look at dishes from developing
nations at stores that sell imports, you'll sometimes see a stamp on the
dish that says it is lead free.  (I believe the family's juice pitcher was
imported.)
 
In the Middle East a few centuries ago, copper dishes indicated wealth.
But they knew that bare copper would make people sick, too.  So the copper
dishes were coated with tin, and people knew that when the silvery tin
started to wear off and the copper showed through, the dish needed
retinning.  When I lived in the Middle East and sometimes bought these
dishes, the sellers were always careful to explain that nowadays, these
dishes should be used only for decoration, and not for serving food.
 
Many cookbooks caution against cooking in aluminum pots and for a time, it
was thought that there was a connection between cooking in uncoated
aluminum pots and Alzheirmer's disease.  I've noticed that in recent years,
sometimes the recipes actually specify using a 'nonreactive glass baking
pan.' I would assume that acids in food, such as lemon juice or vinegar,
might also react unfavorably with uncoated aluminum.  (Unless you have pans
older than about 1970 or so, don't worry if yours are aluminum--they're
most likely coated with stainless steel or another nonreactive substance.)
 
The upshot of all this, for me, is that I use human dishes for my ferrets
and other pets.  In fact, Corningware 'Corelle' rice bowls, which I got at
an outlet store a few years ago, work perfectly for keeping Bob's chicken
gravy from slopping out when my little piggies are lapping it up.  (The
rice bowls hold about a cup and a half and have relatively straight sides.)
(They also fit just right into the holes intended for the plastic tubes
that used to be in the cages until I took them all out and made one giant
ferret maze with them.)
 
For communal feasting, the Corelle platter comfortably feeds 12 ferrets.
 
Jacqueline
[Posted in FML issue 3168]