>French pans have copper or ceramic interiors, and quality American pans
(like
>All-Clad) have stainless, iron or teflon on the inside.


i don't know if it is still the case but in France most of the families
used to own a pressure cooker made out of aluminium . In my own family we
had lot of over pans in aluminium . My "favor" baby food ( white flour white
sugar and milk was cooked in an aluminium pan. My overwhelmed mother of 6
often burned  "la bouillie" at  the bottom and to my own dismay i was
allways claiming that part ( it tasted the best). we were fighting with my
sister to get it .
I did lot of camping in my life and cooked in aluminium pans and carried my
water in an aluminium water ( even when at home i knew better to avoid them-
the advantage of the lightweight was taking over any other concern)
I have now trouble with my short term memory and difficulty to concentrate.
I don't know the  Alzheimer 'symptoms and wonder if statistic could show a
correlation between the craze of the 60 "s for cheap  light ,"
modern"cooking
hardware ( i am sure they advertised this very well) and alzheimer.
They created improvment on those aluminium pans by putting a copper bottom
on the outside to resolve the problem of burning the bottom ,and i have seen
lot of restaurants using them .( i suppose the ones that could not afford
all copper or stainless steel.)
jean-claude