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Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

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Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#21

Post by Panino »

daniel-s wrote: post #10
nerdawson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why take the risk for a minor convenience? Get stainless steel cookware and you’ll quickly learn how to avoid sticking by controlling temperature.

I know nothing about this, please explain.

I cook with stainless steel, including eggs (probably the most challenging food here, IMO). For an over-easy egg, it's sufficient to simply pre-heat the skillet until butter will sizzle and quickly melt (but not brown) when added. For scrambled eggs I do the same, but also continuously rotate the eggs off/on heat. This not only cooks the eggs to a beautiful custard type texture, but also mostly if not entirely prevents sticking.

Almost everything else doesn't require particular consideration on stainless steel IMO. Potatoes can be more difficult than others though. Hash browns are easy, but little stir-fried potato cubes tend to stick.

With meat, generally, the food will unstick when it's sufficiently cooked, which is a handy coincidence if you ask me.

I'd love to get any pointers, too.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#22

Post by oblib »

elil17 wrote: post #2

The study didn’t actually find anything related to cookware. Modern Teflon in the US doesn’t expose people to PFOA/PFOS like old version did due to new regulations. The chemicals could also be entering peoples body’s through drinking water or bioaccumulation in meat or plants. You should throw away nonstick cookware from before 2013, but new nonstick cookware sold in the US does not have PFOA. I believe the EU follow…

My wife and I tossed out all the Teflon cookware we had about 25 years ago and replaced it with cast iron and stainless steel. We've not missed it at all.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#23

Post by Grazester »

nerdawson wrote: post #8
elil17 wrote: post #2

The study didn’t actually find anything related to cookware. Modern Teflon in the US doesn’t expose people to PFOA/PFOS like old version did due to new regulations. The chemicals could also be entering peoples body’s through drinking water or bioaccumulation in meat or plants. You should throw away nonstick cookware from before 2013, but new nonstick cookware sold in the US does not have PFOA. I believe the EU follow…

Why take the risk for a minor convenience? Get stainless steel cookware and you’ll quickly learn how to avoid sticking by controlling temperature.

I can't do the temperature control thing so I use ceramic cookware for things like eggs mostly.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#24

Post by trebbble »

arcticbull wrote: post #14
nerdawson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why take the risk for a minor convenience? Get stainless steel cookware and you’ll quickly learn how to avoid sticking by controlling temperature.

Or a cast iron skillet. Once you develop a good seasoning on it, it's just as nonstick as any pan I've owned.

I've seen well-seasoned cast iron that was nonstick if you treat it the same way as stainless: get it hot before adding anything, and put quite a bit of fat (oil, butter, grease, whatever) in first.

I've not seen any that were nonstick at low temp and with no fat in it, as teflon pans are. I can cold-start eggs in a bare teflon pan with no butter or bacon fat whatsoever, and make totally fine scrambled eggs while keeping the temp very low the entire time. I've seen some extremely well-seasoned cast iron pans (and they are damn nice, and quite nonstick, compared to steel or new cast iron) but they couldn't do that. Not without leaving a mess to clean up after and losing half your eggs to sticking. You could cook eggs in them and nothing would stick, but you had to start fairly hot and add a layer of fat first.

They also leach flavors into everything, which really comes through if you cook anything delicately-flavored in them, and even well-seasoned ones are vulnerable to anything acidic and will leach a ton of unwanted flavors if you cook with e.g. tomato sauce.

I still like them for lots of things, but they're not magic. Teflon... kinda is magic.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#26

Post by nathanvanfleet »

elil17 wrote: post #2

The study didn’t actually find anything related to cookware. Modern Teflon in the US doesn’t expose people to PFOA/PFOS like old version did due to new regulations. The chemicals could also be entering peoples body’s through drinking water or bioaccumulation in meat or plants. You should throw away nonstick cookware from before 2013, but new nonstick cookware sold in the US does not have PFOA. I believe the EU follow…

This is like "BPA is bad, here is a new kind of BPA..."

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#27

Post by trebbble »

daniel-s wrote: post #10
nerdawson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why take the risk for a minor convenience? Get stainless steel cookware and you’ll quickly learn how to avoid sticking by controlling temperature.

I know nothing about this, please explain.

Pans that aren't non-stick can be made far less sticky by not adding anything (except maybe some fat—oil, grease, lard, butter [ghee especially], et c.) until after they're hot. I think it causes phase-changing water in whatever you added to kind of push the food off the pan. You can see this in action by dripping water onto the pan—when it's hot enough, the water will ball up and kinda dance on the pan, while lightly sizzling (that's the lowest point at which it's OK to add food and it probably won't stick much—hotter and the water will sizzle aggressively and may evaporate too fast to really evaluate its behavior, of course, and for most purposes this is too hot to add food anyway, as it'll instantly burn the parts that touch first)

This makes very low-temp or delicate cooking in non-teflon pans a lot tougher, of course. Or anything for which starting from a low temp and slowly increasing is a nice thing to be able to do (tempering chocolate, for example)

[EDIT] Basically the value prop of teflon pans is that they can do just about everything at least well-enough (if not always being the best possible option) with just one type of pan, and that they are much more forgiving of lazy/untrained use or mistakes than stainless or cast iron. They can't do much that's impossible elsewhere, but it may require better technique and closer attention, and maybe having multiple types of pan, if you don't have a teflon option available. The above is one of the ways in which you have to apply some extra care and technique to avoid bad results, which can be all but totally ignored if you're using (undamaged) teflon.

Their main down-side (any health concerns aside) is that they are easily damaged by hard tools. With stainless and cast iron you can scramble your eggs with a metal fork, in a pinch, and it'll probably be entirely fine. Do that in teflon and you'll ruin the finish before long.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#28

Post by Synaesthesia »

oldstrangers wrote: post #16

They're finding PFAS in everything now. https://www.consumerreports.org/bottled-water/pfas-in-bottle... https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gban/rainwater-everywhere-... https://www.dcourier.com/news/2022/aug/11/prescott-valley-sh...

I just read that rainwater around the world is unsafe to drink because of PFAS contamination.

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-rainwater-unsafe-due-chemicals...

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#29

Post by 124816 »

arcticbull wrote: post #13
amluto wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the end goal is to not use a similar analogue. The problematic chemicals are fluorosurfactants used in production, and they are not actually useful in the final pan. Manufacturers are working on getting rid of them: https://www.solvay.com/en/article/eliminating-pfas As far as I know, PTFE itself is also a “forever chemical”, but it’s an extremely inert polymer and is unlikely to be particularly dangerous as l…

> ... but it’s an extremely inert polymer and is unlikely to be particularly dangerous as long as it doesn’t get too hot. You mean like on a stovetop?

Usually beyond the range you normally cook at, but definitely achievable if you leave a pan unattended for a minute, or use it with insufficient coverage. Pet birds are extremely vulnerable, and there's plenty of stories of them dying due to nonstick cookware. I get little benefit from nonstick cookware, so for me the "canary in the kitchen" aspect was enough reason to eliminate it from the house.

Re: Study finds link between 'forever chemicals' in cookware and liver cancer

#30

Post by crazygringo »

nerdawson wrote: post #8
elil17 wrote: post #2

The study didn’t actually find anything related to cookware. Modern Teflon in the US doesn’t expose people to PFOA/PFOS like old version did due to new regulations. The chemicals could also be entering peoples body’s through drinking water or bioaccumulation in meat or plants. You should throw away nonstick cookware from before 2013, but new nonstick cookware sold in the US does not have PFOA. I believe the EU follow…

Why take the risk for a minor convenience? Get stainless steel cookware and you’ll quickly learn how to avoid sticking by controlling temperature.

Not really. And I say this as someone who owns and frequently cooks with stainless steel, cast iron, and non-stick, I have for decades and also worked in a professional kitchen at one point.

Some things are always better in stainless or cast iron... I tend towards meats in cast iron and veggies in stainless, though it really depends.

Other things are easiest in nonstick, but can be learned in stainless, like eggs sunny-side up. Eggs overeasy without breaking the yolk is really hard though. You can do it, but it's not something you're gonna learn quick.

But there are still other things that you're basically insane to try in anything but nonstick, like thin light fish for example. Hence why professional kitchens still use lots of nonstick, even cooks who have all the technique you can have.

(And as wonderful as your cast iron patina may be, the idea that it's somehow equivalent to "nonstick" is utter nonsense. Obviously a patina is necessary, but it's not like frying eggs is ever any easier in cast iron than it is in stainless. As with stainless, any and all non-sticking is due to using lots of oil on top of a flat surface.)

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