Another old wives’ tale (or old husband’s if you prefer). Mayonnaise, because of its relatively low pH (in other words, it is acidic) will actually help prevent spoilage. The pH (level of acidity) of commercial mayo in the US is required to be 4.5 or below, and that is very uninviting to spoilage bacteria. When chicken salad or something similar spoils, it is the other ingredients spoiling, not the mayo. When going on a picnic or setting out a buffet it is important to keep foods cold, but there’s no reason to avoid mayo.
The avoidance of mayo in some situations likely got its start back in the days when mayo was almost always homemade, and homemade mayo typically is a lot less acidic than today’s commercial product.
It’s become almost an article of faith that gas cooktops are better than electric, and that any “serious” cook should aspire to owning one. This belief does not stand up to intelligent scrutiny, however. Gas cooktops are fine, of course, but when comparing them to electric you will see that there’s no overall objective superiority. Let’s take a look at some of the ways gas and electric differ–and then a brief look at induction cooking.
This myth got its start a number of years ago when medical researchers found elevated levels of aluminum in diseased tissue from the brains of Alzheimer’s patients (dead ones, I hope). One logical possibility (but not the only one) was that the raised aluminum level was responsible for causing the disease. Get exposed to too much aluminum, from your job perhaps or your cookware, and you would have a better chance of coming down with this awful disease. People started avoiding aluminum cookware, and some still are – unnecessarily it turns out. Subsequent research has failed to show any connection between aluminum exposure and Alzheimer’s, and it is believed that the elevated aluminum in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients is a result of the disease process. In other words, high aluminum levels do not cause Alzheimer’s, but rather Alzheimer’s causes high aluminum levels.
