Carbon steel or cast iron all the way.
Enameled cast iron is also great
Is this the ceramic coated ones?
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I guess they don’t want our traffic then.
It’s unfortunate - I thought it was a fairly comprehensive and readable overview of the differences between enamel and ceramic coated
A bit ironic that a group labeling themselves the “Cookware Sustainability Alliance” is fighting to continue making unsustainable cookware.
Both the fact that they have a voice that influences politicians more than their actual voters and that they’re allowed to call themselves that name is really a perfect representation of society.
Costly but good
Cast iron is cheap at the second hand store.
Keep in mind that nonstick cookware is still very safe when handled correctly. The problem lies in the manufacturing of these needed chemicals. When these chemicals get into the environment, because of improper safety management, it will stay there for hundreds of years, taking it’s toll on flora and fauna.
very safe when handled correctly
Too many people are not educated about that.
The problem lies in the manufacturing of these needed chemicals. When these chemicals get into the environment, because of improper safety managemen
Which is one of the reasons for that law, see:
Dubbed “Amara’s Law” after 20-year-old cancer victim Amara Strande, who in 2023 succumbed to a rare type of liver cancer linked to PFAS after growing up near a Minnesota-based 3M plant that dumped them into the local water supply, the new regulation bans the chemicals and any items made with them from being sold within the state.
Too many people are not educated about that.
I’ve never met the sort of idiots who put an empty pan on some turbo heat or use metal with nonstick, but I know they’re out there.
You’ve never known anyone to forget a pan on the stove? I know several and even did it once myself
You’ve never kept a nonstick pan despite visible damage to the coating “it looks ok…”?
You’ve never kept a “good” non-stick pan past its recommended life expectancy?
What about the broiler? Even though I should know better, it was just this year when I finally made the connection that I’ve been using a non-stick baking sheet under the broiler for decades.
No, no, don’t know, not sure what that means
You can find online a lot of surprisingly short life expectancies for non-stick pans. Most commonly you should replace after 5-7 years or any visible sign of damage to the coating. Do you make sure to replace all your pans by then?
PFOA was legal until I think 2012. That’s not only a failure of the government to establish safe standards, but all too many people kept that cookware years past when it was no longer used, perhaps even until today.
Non-stick cookware can off-gas toxic fumes when used too hot. A common broiler can do that: you should not use non-stick pans under a broiler. However most bakeware is non-stick. An actual broiler pan uses a ceramic coating to withstand the higher temperatures: you should not just use any bakeware of the right shape.
If my pans start breaking then ofc I will replace them.
PFOA was legal until I think 2012. That’s not only a failure of the government to establish safe standards, but all too many people kept that cookware years past when it was no longer used, perhaps even until today.
I thought cookware wasn’t really a concern here, more the plants making it and it getting into drinking water, being used in food packaging, that sort of stuff. “Overall, PTFE cookware is considered an insignificant exposure pathway to PFOA.”
Non-stick cookware can off-gas toxic fumes when used too hot. A common broiler can do that: you should not use non-stick pans under a broiler. However most bakeware is non-stick. An actual broiler pan uses a ceramic coating to withstand the higher temperatures: you should not just use any bakeware of the right shape.
You need to heat it up to 260’C which is quite hot. I haven’t had the heat limit be an issue personally.
Cookware isn’t a major vector for pfoa anymore
By 2007, studies showed that the concentration of PFOA in a sample of the U.S. population’s bloodstream (collected in 2003-2004) was 25 percent less than that in samples collected in 1999-2000
Normal cooking appliances can be hot enough both on stovetop (such as with a dry pan left on a burner) and in the broiler to damage non-stick coatings
Teflon and other coatings can begin to break down when the temperature reaches 500˚F
Yeah I guess that converts to 260°C but the point is that ovens do get this hot
You’re lucky then. I have had multiple flatmates who don’t understand what a nonstick pan is, scraped the pans up, and continued to use them. Despite warning.
Finns must be particularly smart folk hah
Spoken like somebody who did not marry a person that is even more careless and ADHD than themselves, lol.
That sucks
Fortunately we only have one tiny nonstick pan that she uses for occasional eggs. And I’m the only one that uses the carbon steel wok or occasionally cast iron.
For everything else, stainless steel with an internal aluminum layer, and a nice black circle in the center of the pans, haha.
I was that idiot once. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you
*pushes all the nonstick pans into a cupboard to keep them safe*
And how do you dispose of it correctly? Cookware shouldn’t need to come with an MSDS sheet
Put it in the metal recycling bin in my case. But depends on your local recycling/waste management system.
Wait, it’s not the material on the Pans?
It is the material on the pans, but the only case where the companies making the stuff were successfully sued was when they were caught for dumping intermediates of the chemical in to a tributary of Ohio river.
It’s hard to pin down how impactful the coatings on the pans are because of how many other sources of these kinds of fluorocarbons are in house hold items, and in the environment due to large companies disposing of them recklessly. We know for a fact that basically everyone has some level of these compounds in them due to their ubiquity.
The pans are just one potential source and a particularly notable one because they’re in contact with food.
That’s the first part, used correctly it’s a non issue so just use your nonstick correctly.
Using nonstick correctly: Dont use anything but silicone spatulas on it, do not use more than 50% of your stoves power or gas stove or you will get cancer and die. Buy a new one every 5 years anyway since it somehow became stick pan.
Using stainless pan: Find it from some junk metal pile, discover it was manufactured in the roman empire, give it a good scrub. Use it on any source imaginable and when hawk thuah slides around instead of sizzles, it’s good to go.
Please don’t hawk tuah your pans while cooking
Using nonstick correctly: Don’t use metal and don’t heat it over 260 °C
Source on the pan giving you cancer?
Yes, non-stick becomes stick because the teflon coating comes off, it’s really hard to make teflon stick to anything. Using metal utensils will hasten this but afaik simply using heat will help loosen the teflon coating.
I don’t mind buying a new non-stick pan about every 5 years (last one lasted 7), I usuall stick to the cheapest ones, they serve a specific service to me that stainless ones can’t do.
Are you really asking “provide proofs of a pan I am warned to not heat up too much as the vapours will cause flu like symptoms and kill pet avians is bad for my health.” is bad for you? It is. Why do you think you need to buy new pans every x years? Cause the non-stick layer wears off. Do bits of coating that contain top tier carciogens which are considered safe unless ingested magically vanish into the void? Yes. Except the void is your body.
I have been relying on my teflons less and less the more I get good with the stainless. I’ve now been making crepes and japanese omlets with less sticking than my few years old teflons.
Afaik the coating is not a carcinogen only under certain circumstances like high heat can it produce something unsafe but even there it’s just potential, not yet proved to be carcinogenic but feel free to prove me wrong.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa.html It says it ssafe since it’s tightly bound to the pan. I guess its true, its completely 100% safe. After all, there is no reason for anyone who owns a non stick pan to ever buy a new one since they keep being nonstick for generations, right? Surely even if you treat your pan just as they say, it means the coating doesn’t wear off, right? And us educated people we know once something wears via abrasion it means it leaves behind no residue, right?
I bought a cheap stainless pan about 20 years ago. Don’t have issues with food sticking, don’t have to worry abouy coatings coming off, and if the handle breaks I can make a new one.
Coating breaks down, stainless doesn’t.
I have a mix of stainless steel and cast iron. I’m not terribly worried about consuming small amounts of either of those.
A bonus is that because it’s all metal I can use most of it in ovens or while cooking outdoors.
Sticking isn’t really that much of an issue if you’re careful. I feel like non-stick would’ve never taken off if people knew how toxic it was in 1970.
Like throw it away every 6 months.
Edit: or 1 or 2 years, it was hyperbole. Instead of like never throwing it out?
The nonstick pans I’ve using are several years old now without any signs of deteriorating nonstick surfaces. Use cookware out of wood or plastic to not scrape off the coating.
I have 1 big nonstick and 1 small nonstick. They never saw high heat, they never saw ANY metal instruments, when stored they are protected by felt so nothing hard touches them, they never seen a steel sponge and they still became regular stick pans 2 years into their lifespan. Before you say “skill issue buying the pan” they were mid level (expensive pans for no cooks) pans from a reputable company. I have been a pro chef as well. Nonsticks are a wear item even if you treat them like shit on a stick. My oldest stainless is like 40 years old, has a huge dent on the side and works the same as it did on day one. I dug it out of someones fishing shed.
I have been a pro chef as well.
Doubt
All it takes to become a chef is to accept the back breaking underpaid labour of working in a kitchen and following instructions. There are no preliminary requirements, only time invested.
If you use it incorrectly then yeah. You might as well stop making food as well because clearly you don’t know what you’re doing.
What are you even talking about?
Are you le grand anti-adhesive chef?
What a ridiculous world we live in. The board members should be facing prison sentences, the company’s liquidated and the money back to the people.
How about the suggestions that they are selling a product that should last for several lifetimes but instead lasts for 5 years if you treat it very well?
Personally I don’t give a damn about a pan whose entire life is spent slowly scraping away the carciogen on it and ingesting it with every meal you make. I am however not going to be scammed by the teflon pan manufacturers into buying a new overpriced pan every few years. Every other non non-stick pan outlasts multible generations of humans. A non stick in a professional kitchen won’t even make it to 1 year old.
If we didn’t live in capitalist plutocracies masquerading as “democracy”, every non-stick pan ever sold would be blatant false advertising and they wouldn’t be profitable to sell anymore.
Lifetime guarantee my ass. None last more than a couple years of daily use regardless of how meticulously they’re cared for.
You’ll find that lifetime guarantee almost always means for production errors. Not wear and tear.
Just use cast iron and stainless steel. I don’t own anything else.
Cast iron ftw!
Is it really that bad? Sure it might be linked to cancer but so are lots of other things.
I personally just use normal cookware plus some vision stuff. All you need to do is salute some onions ahead of adding other things. The juice from the onions acts as a natural non stick.
🧅 🧅 🫡
Doing god’s work
I mean when there’s a fun little joke to be made, and I can post emoji-only rather than the usual text-only and my fellow nerds will like it, AND we’re in nottheonion which I didn’t notice until afterwards, how can I resist?
in the produce section thank you for your service
You made me laugh, have an updoot
The updoot-to-text ratio is off the charts with this comment, lol.
In reality no one can say for certain, but a lot of research is pointing to long term exposure being bad. The problem is that the research to determine how bad will take decades (and has been going on for decades at this point). Right now it’s being used as the boogeyman for every sort of ill from causing cancer, infertility, issues with lactation, liver failure, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, and auto-immune disorders. Basically the preliminary research says that it at least in part impacts all of these things, we just don’t know how much.
On the flip side bacon also causes cancer and high cholesterol at some level. That’s not to make light of the situation, but it does give some credence to your earlier statement.
The thing people are missing in these discussions is what are they willing to live without if we don’t use these chemicals. Going without non-stick cookware is literally the tip of the iceberg. How do we feel about cars, furniture, and mattresses being more flammable because they don’t have the fire retarding forever chemicals? How do we feel about stain resistance, oil resistance, water resistance, and slip resistance in everything including shoes, umbrellas, clothes, oven mitts, jackets, and more? How do we feel about needing to clean everything including clothes, appliances, and floors more often. How about in industry where it’s used as a fume suppressant so smelly chemicals don’t waft as far or fire fighting foams the next time an electric car catches on fire? This stuff is even in the wrapping of your food so the it doesn’t go through the packaging and cause a mess as easily.
Dupont coined the phrase “Better Living Through Chemistry” and that chemistry is PFAS. It’s in your clothes when you buy them, it’s in your detergent when you clean them, it’s in the cleaner that you wipe your washer off with, it’s in the floor sealant of the laundry room that washer is in, it’s in the gloves you wear while cleaning that laundry room, it’s in the carpet in the room next to the laundry room, and the list goes on and on.
Dropping PFAS chemicals fully would probably send us back to the 1960’s or we’ll end up replacing it with something just as bad that we don’t know the effects of yet.
It’s not just the use itself, but also how irresponsibly it is produced. Exposing pregnant workers to high levels, dumping it in community water supplies, on farmland etc.
Also the EU did ban them last september (effective in 2026) for essentially all of the uses you outlined, most of which I dont think are such a big deal and just minor inconveniences. It’s not like the 60s were terrible in terms of living conditions.
We also used to use asbestos for a lot of the uses you outlined and we got rid of that without too much inconvenience, but you could have made similar arguments about it back then.
And any reduction is a good thing, it’s not an all or nothing thing. DDT was banned, but can and is still used where there’s no better alternative. And just categorically saying any alternative must be just as bad is just a non-sequitur, there’s no reason that should be true. Cookware is a good example, cast iron works just as well, is not as bad, the only downside compared to teflon is weight. But it’s not like sending us back to the stone age or anything…
And just categorically saying any alternative must be just as bad is just a non-sequitur, there’s no reason that should be true. Cookware is a good example, cast iron works just as well, is not as bad, the only downside compared to teflon is weight. But it’s not like sending us back to the stone age or anything…
You can have your own opinion here, but anything which performs like PFAS compounds, in the variety of uses that PFAS is used, will almost certainly be bad. In general when you make new compounds and materials which are more complex their potential health impacts are worse. PFAS is already an extremely complex material and while broad sweeping statements might not be 100% accurate, I wouldn’t bet that it’s replacement would be better for people.
It’s another thing altogether if you are recommending going backward in the development chain, cookware is a good example here but it’s limited case underlies the ubiquity of PFAS. Hell, PFAS is a major component in computer part manufacturing and is part of the reason computing technology has progressed as it has.
It’s in the rain and every freshwater fish or lake water has it, such that even once per year fish consumption is not recommended. Safe level is 4.4ng per kg body weight/week. 300ng for adult male. Half kilo of fish will be 4800ng. Technically that is 3 fish portions per year, but you will get enough smaller amounts every day to breech limit with freshwater fish.
You have a point that it may still be needed for some stuff.
You can’t have it needed in some stuff and critically dangerous if it’s a bio-accumulating chemical that virtually never breaks down. To reduce it enough to not be a hazard world wide you would functionally have to stop using it everywhere.
I haven’t seen any definitive results on dangerous health levels, 4.4 ng/kg might be it, but then other studies show people with mg/L of blood concentration. Overall the effects of exposure seem to depend on more than just the concentration, such as health status, exposure duration, magnitude of exposure, and how lucky you got with the genetic lottery. Even then we are fairly certain it is bad, we just don’t know what or how specifically. I would also throw caution at any study using ng as a serious measurement here, especially over prolonged exposure. The problem with measuring on such a low level is that you have far too much uncertainty to claim any true accuracy, at best these studies are guessing when they throw out numbers. Hell, the EPA just came out with a standardized method for analyzing PFAS last year.
At those levels of exposure you’re probably getting it just from eating commercially grown fruits and vegetables, because it can bio-accumulate in those as well.
other studies show people with mg/L of blood concentration
4.4ng/kg per week was the result from google “safe pfas levels”. 46 weeks gets to 1 mg.
Um, no it doesn’t… maybe you’re confusing micrograms for nanograms?
Can’t even use a Teflon pan if you have a budgie or the fumes will kill it.
So I think it is probably quite bad.
It’s perfectly fine so long as none of the coating gets in your body, but given you’re making food with it, there’s a high chance it will.
If it get’s too hot it will off gas, if it gets scratched with something harder than it (like a metal spatula, or salt grains) it will flake off. So you should use plastic or wood utensils when cooking in one, and the black plastic utensils have their own issues with often being made from recycled plastics that have fire retardants mixed in, which can leach out.
You can be safe with them but it requires you be careful and deliberate with use. Personally, I think it’s easier just to use something else, even if that means taking the time to learn about how to use them well.
I never use anything but wood and plastic so it is probably fine
This article is horrible. Anyway…
Teflon has a melting point of 327°C, that can happen on a stove.
IMO It’s fine, just don’t burn your pan. Not sure about scratching it, but don’t do that either.
it seems like the primary concern of the article is the waste from producing it, not its usage
So, just don’t do the two things that happen to every non-stick pan ever. Gotcha.
My mom has like “chemophobia” is is constantly afraid medications or “GMO”. Well looks like she got this part right tho, she was always afraid of a non stick stuff chipping off and hate any “non stick” cookware. Broken clock, twice a day, ya know.
All real nonstick cookware is Teflon or chemically related to it. I almost always use cast iron or carbon steel but they are not nonstick, you have to control heat and acidity for them to release well. You can even see in nonstick pans that liquids will tend to bead up and not spread out because of the surface, versus in any other pan you’ll only see water bead up when you hit certain temps. I can only achieve something like a French omelette in a nonstick pan, carbon steel has always been a disaster, because of that me and a lot of other people keep a nonstick around just for certain egg and crepe recipes.
Never really had any issue with Teflon (and Teflon substitute) pans, but I’ve been impressed with the non-stickiness of my dirt cheap “ceramic” wok.
The issue is that we don’t have much research on the ceramic coatings ether. They might be fine, but, there hasn’t really been enough testing to know. We might just be walking in to the same problem all over again, fluorocarbon coatings seemed fine at fist to, then they turned out to be a huge problem.
I’ve found that the ceramics lose their non stick quality at around the 2 year mark
I use Greenpan, a ceramic nonstick pan
I was shopping around for nonstick pans some months ago, and exhaustively looking to see if any of them were free of pfas and other toxins. By the end I was nearly pulling my hair out because they pretty much are all bad, including Greenpan. I no longer have the variety of sources I found back then, but here’s one source on them (mind you I wouldn’t necessarily trust this site’s recommendations either).
https://www.leafscore.com/eco-friendly-kitchen-products/why-we-no-longer-recommend-greenpan/
Good to know, thanks for the link. I’ll be sure to check out the top picks in the article
You’ll want to do more research from multiple sources. My memory of it is hazy, but I think I remember the enameled cast iron sets being relatively the best option (albeit expensive), but the biggest thing I remember is every time I would find one source saying brand [a] was the good one, it wasn’t long before I’d find another source saying that tests showed the same brands had toxins in them. It’s an exercise in frustration.
It really boils down to what are you’re willing to tolerate and how much do you want to spend. Unless you want to go copper/stainless/cast but even those probably leach something into the food, and can be difficult to cook with. We need to invent the Star Trek replicator
Same! I love my Greenpans.
These non-stick pans are usually cheaper then stainless steel and cast iron, so people with lower income are more prone to buy it. Consequently, considering that low education is associated with poverty, poor people are buying more of this type of pans and not using it “properly” so getting exposed to possibly more harm and not knowing about it.
Also, " just discard the pan if flocking occurs", is everything that this industry wants: you’ll continue in an indefinitely loop of trowing away pans and buying new ones for the maximization of their profits. Thus is expected that flocking will occur more soon than ever.
