The links you require are on this very board... just search Surgical and you'll find all the ammunition you need to shoot down this idea.

P.S. Search SaladMaster for good measure.

Here is a link that might be useful: GardenWeb Search for Surgical

I've been looking for something that I can wash in the dishwasher and discovered Kitchenaid brushed stainless pots are dw safe and consumer reports recommend. I've been watching the prices on amazon and they've gone from $159 to $135 for a whole set. I haven't ordered them yet but will prob do so soon. Another brand that has good ratings is costco's kirkland. they have a 14 pc set of non-stick for $179. I know this information is not saving your marriage but maybe it'll help give you/her other ideas.

I had posted the following information on another thread. I'm adding it to this thread as it seems appropriate information for those searching Salad Master or the Baking Soda Test.

"We all eat more aluminum than we realize and other metals too. Aluminum is really all around us in many chemical forms.

It exists in a relatively high concentration in our soil. Some soils have more aluminum in it than others. For example, certain Jamaican soils are so high in aluminum content that it is predominately composed of the ore we know as Bauxite. Bauxite ore (i.e. Jamaican Dirt) is the raw material used in the manufacture of Aluminum. Aluminum is a major component of all clays.....and soils high in clays are high in aluminum content. Some of the dust we breath in has aluminum in it. Aluminum is used to remove suspended solids ( i.e. dirt) from water in some water treatment plants. Natural water picks up aluminum as it moves over soil or through earth's strata. It is found naturally in many of the foods that we eat. It is part of the metal containing minerals that we consume with our foods. It is the metal which holds our beer and soft drinks. When analyst calculate the aluminum content in our diet and it is calculated in its most common chemical form......i.e. Al2O3 (or clay).....it amounts to pound per year. It is not harmful to humans.

We humans consume a lot of other metals too as a natural part of our diet and medicines.......and that's a really good thing!! To name a few..........Sodium, Calcium, Iron, Potassium, Magnesium, Zinc, Selenium, Copper, Manganese, Chromium, Iodine, Lithium, Thallium, etc. Many of these metals are very beneficial to us and we would become unhealthy without them. For example:

1) Iron keeps us from getting anemic and keeps us strong.
2) Lithium keeps us from going nuts.
3) Sodium makes things taste salty and is a necessary electrolyte.
4) Magnesium is used in water softeners.
5) Potassium is used in our body cells to transport energy.
6) Calcium is in our bones.
7) Aluminum is used to clean water. It is in our
antacids. It is in Pepto Bismol. It holds our soft drinks and beer.
8) Copper is healthy, at least according to those
who have the bracelets. It is necessary in our diet for the manufacture of certain bodily proteins.
9) Zinc is in antiperspirant.
10) Iodine is required to prevent certain deficiency
diseases such as goiter
11) Thallium is required for certain brain functions.
12) etc.

However; if we consume too much of these metals, we may become unhealthy. Some metals may become toxic at high concentrations. So what are we to do?

Eat a balanced diet with everything in moderation. Take a vitamin & mineral supplement and exercise regularly. And most importantly.... we need to stop worrying about TOXIC cookware. That problem simply does not exist in this country. It is fraudulent for anyone to claim otherwise.

We need to focus more on removing the stress out of our lives rather than removing the metals out of our diet. The real threats to our health come from stress, food choices, and lack of exercise.

Don't worry......be happy (with your cookware)!! ......goes a long way to making one healthier than worrying about non-existent toxic aluminum, cast iron, or stainless steel pots and pans."

Dan

oops posted this on the wrong thread.....sorry.

Dan

i just don't understand how my wife could belive that these MLM products are both "excellent" and "cheap."
she's so hooked on amway that she's gonna sign a membership
with them.

i even asked her if their products are "that good" and cheap, how come they haven't taken over the world market in fifty years. and why do they have to keep paying commissions to ibo's when their products should advertise by itself.

she just wouldn't listen. i think my wife has a serious problem.

does anyone have a good link to amway schemes? thank you.

I googled 'icook cookware' and wanted to see what all the hullaballoo was about. Here are my impressions:

1. While they are all made of stainless steel (and by the way, there's no special alloy called 'surgical' stainless--sounds like hype to me) they don't say what this special 'Optitemp' base is. Stainless is a lousy conductor of heat, so pots made of stainless have to incorporate a bottom disc of some other metal--usually aluminum--to improve the heat conduction.

My impression: if they ain't telling you what it is, they don't want you to know. Reputable manufacturers will boast about their copper bottoms or aluminum bottoms. Why doesn't icook tell you what theirs is?

2. 'Vitalok' lid sounds like a marketing gimmick. You can find good cookware items in many price ranges that have snug lids. If it locks tightly enough to hold pressure in, it would need safety features like a pressure cooker; since it doesn't have such features, if the pressure builds up it will knock the lid ajar. I fail to see what this 'Vitalok' is other than a snug lid.

3. Seems WAY overpriced. The price I saw quoted for a 21 piece set was just under $1000. Trust me, if you want to spend a grand on cookware, you can do a helluva lot better than that. You can get a nice starter set of Wolfgang Puck stainless at Sam's club for around a TENTH of that, if you really want a matching set (which, as we have said before in other threads, is often a false economy). I don't know how good the Wolfgang Puck set is, but I would wager anything that icook isn't ten times as good as the Puck stuff. (Do a search of this forum; some people have purchased Puck sets and left comments. Sam's carries other lines as well.)

4. It reeks of gimmicky marketing. Multilevel schemes always make me suspicious--not of the quality of the goods or even of the honesty of those people trying to get you to buy them--but the claims made for these products are not consistent with claims made by other cookware companies. For instance, a 'Vitalok' lid holds in a third more nutrients--that reeks of hype and bogus-ness. (Bogosity?)

Here's an idea. Find out the total amount of money this Amway rep wants for this set of cookware. Say it's $900, whatever. Post a new thread, saying, "Hey, all you cookware mavens out there: my cookware budget is $900. How would YOU spend that to outfit your kitchen? And what would you do if you had HALF that amount to spend?"

You'd be inundated with suggestions by helpful charming people like me who have no financial interest in selling cookware, and I'd bet you dollars to donuts that you'd get a fine set of tools to accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish in the kitchen.

It would help us to help you if you let us know what type of cooking you do or are interested in doing. If you do a lot of frying, roasting, slow cooking, braising, whatever. And how many people do you cook for, usually?

If, on the other hand, what you mostly do is open cans and heat them up (don't be ashamed, we all did that at one time) then you really should just get the cheapest mass market cookware there is, because that would do just fine--the thousand bucks or so for the icook set would be about ten times what you needed to spend.

Again, I restate my bias: a set is almost always a bad buy since there are items you won't use. (And my suspicion is that a set from a multilevel marketer is an even worse buy.) You're better off defining what you want to do and then buying a good item that does that task well.

If you do this exercise (i.e., asking people how would they spend "X" amount of dollars) you'll get lots of suggestions. But even if you decide to get that pricey set, at least you'd have made the decision with eyes open, seeing what all is out there.

I almost never buy items which are sold through this method. Why? They are inevitably overpriced. The person selling has to make a commission, and his/her supplier takes their cut, and so on. There are several people in line to take a cut of your purchase, so the price has to be jacked up to accommodate all those commissions and still allow the company to make a profit.

And the person selling you the stuff always wants you to start selling it too because that means they'll get their cut of whatever YOU sell too. What a racket!

There's no shortage of good quality pots & pans out there on the regular market at reasonable prices. On top of that, if you don't cook often, why bother to get expensive cookware? I do cook and after 20+ years I'm just now finally getting around to investing $$$ in really good cookware, one piece at a time. In the meantime I've managed to cook some pretty good meals in some very reasonably priced cookware till now.

Hi, I'm just checking back and wanted to see what people were offering as solutions.
After reading the comments, I did a google on "amway sucker" and there may be some good references there.
Give it a look and then you may want to ask her to google the same. It may embarrass her and convince her that she's naive.

I have owned a set of icook for 16 years and the frying pans are just now starting to wear out. I suspect they would have lasted longer but the person who first used them was incompetent. I will buy another set and hope they last 20 years because I take care of things very well. I am not in Amway, I just know an excellent product when I use it for 16 years. Every item has pro's and con's. In my opinion the pro's far outweigh the con's. In the end you get what you pay for.

A friend tried to convince me to work for Amway. i didn't like their products, and was appalled at how many meetings i would have to attend. Definitely not for me. Hope your wife has asked about the required time commitment.