Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid • Hacker News Board

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#761

Post by alwayslikethis » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:14 PM UTC

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #711

alwayslikethis wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teflon is not very thermally conductive, so the bottom contacting the metal substrate may be at a significantly higher temperature than the top. Chemistry reactions have activation energies, and you can generally always trade temperature for time. If it happens in a minute at 260 C, it will still happen at 200 C, just slower.

Because of the way toxicity works happening slower is quite relevant. Similarly if you drink a bottle of vodka slowly enough you will have no significant health effects but if you drink it in 2 minutes then it’s not going to be great.

Different poisons have different accumulation characteristics. The relevant part here is that perfluorocarbons are fairly persistent in your body. Your body needs a few hours or a day to process the vodka, but the PFAS in your blood takes months/years to leave your body.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#762

Post by Brusco_RF » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:19 PM UTC

potato3732842 wrote: post #360

michaelt wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country we have some ridiculous newspapers that will publish any story with "may cause cancer" in the headline. So for a lot of people these stories are a boy-who-cried-wolf situation. Precautionary principle? I'm sorry to say stainless steel may leech heavy metals into food during cooking [1] And also silicone may leech potentially harmful chemicals into food [2] Nonstick coatings? Teflon flu "could be a real…

The part that really drives me up the wall is that the demographics who decades ago decried plastics to be superior because they don't harbor bacteria like wood or break dangerously like glass are roughly the same ones who are now complaining about plastic. I don't have a cultural analogy for this situation but whatever it is is worse than "boy who cried wolf".

I am old enough to remember when we needed to switch to plastic bags over paper to "save the trees"

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#763

Post by stonethrowaway » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:19 PM UTC

Another reason to avoid The Atlantic.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#764

Post by willy_k » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:20 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #564

liveoneggs wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a weird hill to die on when you can get an almost-exact item made from silicone instead of that gross plastic

...until next week, when the prestigious scientific journal "The Atlantic" publishes a hot take on the dangers of silicone!

I mean there are nasty compounds in silicone that can leak into food especially with heat and wear and tear, it’s probably not ideal to cook on.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#765

Post by Der_Einzige » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:22 PM UTC

mkesper wrote: post #755

Der_Einzige wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so true. Trying to explain to lay people how garbage peer review is (I show them my accepted NeurIPS paper reviews as evidence of how bad it is) tough. Most people imagine that (especially at the highest levels) that folks are independently reproducing results or at least doing something more than running ChatGPT on the paper. It's exactly the opposite - peer review is a joke. The number one thing that made m…

I don't get what the cave allegory has to do with false incentives (creating papers for creating papers).

The idea that those who engage is a "dialectical" fashion of academic style education are more "correct" or "see reality for how it is" compared to others.

I am firmly an Epistemology Anarchist - that is I agree with almost everything Paul feyerband ever wrote. I don't believe that knowledge/truth is influenced by the method for which it is found. Real, reproducible truth is found all the time outside of traditional academic or scientific norms/methods. The medium is firmly not the message and Marshall McLuhan is a quack.

Basically, when Plato says "the farmer should not rule" I respond with "neither should the philosopher or the so called philosopher king"

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#766

Post by reducesuffering » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:24 PM UTC

potato3732842 wrote: post #705

reducesuffering wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" - This one single scientific paper changes everything and you are negligent if you don’t immediately change your life based on it." Is not a reliable, frequent, pattern that is in any way a valid criticism of the community as a whole. Incredible

What you're quoting is satire of serious commentary. Few people unironically take it to such an extreme. But the undertone it's mocking is absolutely real and persistent. Not everyone on 4chan is a flaming bigot but yet the community as a while gets (rightfully) judged for allowing it in their midst. Why are lesser forms of poor behavior not also reflective of the community?

Ah the ol' satire defense. Even a watered-down version of that isn't reflective of a large majority of the people here, so your statement still doesn't stand. Everywhere else, HN has a reputation for being hyper-critical and dismissive of almost everything. So much so, that this article which is essentially "don't burn plastic" has many, many comments discussing caveats, the single study, and vagueness...

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#767

Post by usea » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

Gravityloss wrote: post #441

spacemark wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal spatulas aren't an option for most, either, as they scratch pans. So what's the suggested realistic alternative? Wood? Edit: wasn't trying to be snarky or anything. Honestly concerned for my family's health and trying to figure out the best path. Wood spatulas it is. Replacing all our PTFE pans with much more expensive cast iron pans isn't an option for our budget right now. Plus I haven't seen convincing scien…

Wood spatulas are great. They are also cheap. If you have a fireplace, you can even burn them at the end of life so very little waste!

Burning wood in your fireplace is much more certain to harm you than using plastic in your cookware, and the harm is more severe.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#768

Post by 0_____0 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:28 PM UTC

azemetre wrote: post #653

Dalewyn wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>never using soap to clean That doesn't sound (and isn't) healthy.

You hear this sometimes from cast iron owners that think using some soap will "ruin" the seasoning. It's a myth, you can absolutely use soap. My preferred method is chainmail + coarse salt + small drop of dawn.

Dawn kinda smells tho, especially when the pan is heated again for the first time. Whatever it pyrolyzes to, I'm not sure I want to smell or eat it. The store brand dishwasher detergent seems to not smell as much but if there's no debris from the food I avoid soap or use it very sparingly.

Good tip with the coarse salt, I'll have to try that sometime.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#769

Post by 0_____0 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:29 PM UTC

neild wrote: post #616

0_____0 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seasoning isn't that precious either. I accidentally left my cast iron on the stove and burned off most of the seasoning, took it as an opportunity to smooth out the surface with sandpaper, gave it a couple of coats of canola and put it back into service. Within a couple of days it was basically where it was before. I also do 70% of my cooking in that pan!

I do almost all my cooking on cast iron—no philosophical reason, it just works well and once I figured out how to use it I found that I pretty much always reach for a cast iron pan over stainless steel or non-stick. (Except non-stick for omelettes and stainless steel for anything where I want the find.) My big realization was that there’s a lot of macho information there about the care of cast iron, and it’s pretty m…

When i went home to visit my dad, I cooked an egg on his decades old cast iron. He scrapes the absolute bejeezus out of it, has no idea what seasoning is, uses soap. It cooked wonderfully. That was my eye opener moment.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#770

Post by 0_____0 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 7:33 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #708

Dalewyn wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>never using soap to clean That doesn't sound (and isn't) healthy.

I think it is healthy. There is basically nothing to be worried about that dealt killed by water or heat. A hot pan is twice the temperature of a medical autoclave. Soap is more of a cleaning aid for removing flavor than a safety control.

A little mentioned downside to cast iron is that it's porous enough that it will absolutely absorb certain things like turmeric that will only come out once you cook something else in it, no amount of washing or soap seems to make a difference past a certain point. Kind of a non issue to me, just a quirk of the tool.