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Comment by pcrh | Hacker News Reader

What are the local cooking pots made of? Steel and cast iron would be the cheapest, and I assume leach iron into the food. I also imagine that the surface area of the pot is much larger than that of this "lucky fish".

A quick search found this, which appears to be cast iron:

http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/image/28438185

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The article answers your question.

>the women won’t switch to iron cooking pots because they find them heavy and costly.

OK, I searched a bit and found an article from 2011, which appears to be the original source (free access [1]). It appears that aluminum is the most common material from which local pots were made.

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2011....

Correct, it is hard to find anything other than aluminum pots here.

In rural Asia, cast iron tends to be--relative to flimsy aluminum--too expensive, too heavy (a large percentage of those doing the cooking weigh less than 100lbs/45kg), and too poor at conducting heat and too good at absorbing it (thermal inertia), meaning that more cooking fuel is required to cook small meals in cast iron pots than in aluminum.

Power to those who read the article:

[...], and the women won’t switch to iron cooking pots because they find them heavy and costly.

Yes, but what do they use?

looking back on some of the photos from rural markets in Cambodia I have, everything looks like anodized aluminum.

Cheap, Light, Last a long time.

The World Food Programme sometimes provide cooking utensils.

I wonder if they consider providing iron pots in regions with a need?

See eg http://m.wfp.org/photos/gallery/nicaragua-providing-cooking-...

I can't tell what the pots are made of but I don't think it's iron.

Edit: here's what WFP do in Cambodia. http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/re...

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