Soapstone utensils may improve iron status in adult women. A preliminary study.

Soapstone is among the first heat-resistant materials to have been used by man for the manufacture of culinary utensils, but its impact on human nutrition has merited little attention. Here, we present a preliminary evaluation of the impact of soapstone pans on the iron status in humans. Five nuns (37.6 +/- 6.31 y) replaced the soapstone for their traditional aluminum cookware, without any alteration of the diet itself. Comparison of the hematological data, determined before and 10 weeks after switching the pans, revealed that hemoglobin rose from 13.26 to 14.0 mg x dL(-1) (p = 0.0048), and hematocrit increased from 38.14 to 40.71% (p = 0.0002), while the transferrin saturation index went from 28.04 to 28.96% (p = 0.0147) and ferritin, from 31.5 to 34.74 microg x gL(-1) (p = 0.0681). By simply replacing the soapstone for the traditional aluminum cookware, substantially improved the iron status in all subjects in a relatively short period of time.