[peterpumpkin]

Hi everyone,

I am planning on making some hominy. For those who don't already know, Nixtamalization is the old process of making corn more nutritious by soaking it in lye (traditionally water and ash). Wood ash does contain some toxins like aluminium, which I don't want in my food so my question is ; if I soaked wood ash in water and then passed it through a homemade charcoal filter (basically a bucket full of powderised charcoal) a few times would I end up with a purer lye?. Also, would the charcoal react with anything in the lye?

[Arkcon]

Its hard to say definitively.  You plan may not even work -- charcoal only removes certain organic components, not heavy metals.  You may also lose lye in the process.  If the tradition method is wood ashes and water, maybe its best to stick with tradition.  Burn some clean wood into ashes in a safe pot, iron or steel or unglazed pottery.  Than you're sure you have the best ashes.

[Corribus]

Maybe not what you're after, but: Since when is aluminum toxic? The LD₅₀ is like 5 g/kg or something crazy like that. I wouldn't be surprised if there was as much aluminum in the corn as there is in the wood ash.

In any case, you can always just buy food grade lye.

http://www.amazon.com/Grade-Sodium-Hydroxide-Micro-Beads/dp/B001EDBEZM

Of course, that probably has aluminum in it, too, because aluminum is just about everywhere....

Good luck, never nixtamalized my own corn before. Sounds like a fun thing to try. Let us know how it turns out!

[Zyklonb]

Also, aluminum carbonate, hydroxide, oxide - whatever it is, it's insoluble. So a very fine mesh filter or two will get rid of most of it. Like Corribus said, Al isn't really toxic, you'd have to eat more Al contaminated corn in one sitting then a herd of horses could eat in a week to die form it.
How do you plan to get NaOH from wood ashes?

[billnotgatez]

LD50 may not be the only consideration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Alzheimer.27s_disease
Alzheimer's disease

Just saying


By the way just a FYI
http://www.countryfarm-lifestyles.com/make-lye.html#.VI_LI8naUvk
How to Make Lye for Natural Soap Making from Wood Ash

[Corribus]

LD50 may not be the only consideration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Alzheimer.27s_disease
Alzheimer's disease

Of course, LD₅₀ refers only to acute toxicity. But, the link between dementia and aluminum (or any chronic health effects) is exteremely thin . I don't know of any serious public health organization that endorses it at this point. And in any case, the point stands: aluminum is everywhere. Saying you don't want to consume "X" because it might have trace aluminum in it, all the while eating everything else that has trace aluminum in it, seems a little strange. Hell, 99% of us slather the crap under our arm pits every day we're alive in much higher concentrations than we're likely to get through food or other "natural" sources.

Bottom line: until a link between X chemical and Y chronic condition is agreed to by a consensus in the scientific community, I see no reason to make drastic changes to my lifestyle. But that's just my (hopefully not demented) opinion.