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Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

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Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#51

Post by ScottBurson »

nate_meurer wrote: post #38
ScottBurson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The breakdown products of Teflon are also toxic to the prostate, as I found out personally once by eating lots of eggs scrambled in a Teflon skillet. I avoid it now.

Would you mind saying more about what happened to you?

I don't remember exactly how long I had been using this skillet for my eggs -- a couple of months, perhaps, no more. I started having urinary difficulties, went to my doctor, and was diagnosed with Benign Prostate Hyperplasia. He didn't identify any specific cause nor prescribe any treatment, but somehow I got the idea that it might be the Teflon and stopped using it. The problem, which I had never had before, went away and has not recurred.

It's possible this particular skillet had been overheated at some point, though I certainly wasn't using high heat to scramble eggs. But still, why take the chance? The ceramic non-stick surfaces you can get these days work well enough and are much safer (AFAIK, anyway).

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#52

Post by nate_meurer »

ScottBurson wrote: post #51
nate_meurer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind saying more about what happened to you?

I don't remember exactly how long I had been using this skillet for my eggs -- a couple of months, perhaps, no more. I started having urinary difficulties, went to my doctor, and was diagnosed with Benign Prostate Hyperplasia. He didn't identify any specific cause nor prescribe any treatment, but somehow I got the idea that it might be the Teflon and stopped using it. The problem, which I had never had before, went a…

Interesting, thanks.

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#53

Post by logfromblammo »

Neliquat wrote: post #12
colanderman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried cast-iron (mostly for pancakes) but found that it heated very unevenly (to the point of burning food in the center and not cooking food at the edge). I've found success with a multi-clad stainless steel skillet. Heating it to the Leidenfrost point [1] ensures that nothing sticks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect#Leidenfrost...

Disclaimer: I am an avid cast iron user. It seems like cast iron fails on electric cooktops, or in the case of much of the thin modern cast iron cookware. In an effort to keep weight down to compete, they ruined the product. Gas flame mostly solves this, but is increasingly uncommon.

I cook with cast iron frequently, but I have been unable to find any recently-manufactured cast iron cookware that is actually worth buying. I think I last checked around 2006, so maybe the quality of available product has improved since then. I do know that "pre-seasoned" pans are just a complete waste of time, because you have to remove that spray-on crap before seasoning it properly.

So I pretty much just use the one Wagner pan, manufactured before 1996.

The nonstick PTFE coatings on my other cookware has always come off after a few years of use. I can't refresh the coating in my own kitchen, so the pan is basically useless after that. So I'll stick with the polymerized vegetable oil seasoning, even though the cast iron cookware is not as idiot-proof as more modern cookware construction. I like being able to keep something for 20 years, and not have to continually discard and replace crap that's not even 5 years old.

It would be nice if I could laser-sputter AlMgB14 + TiB2 onto a 12" round BAs wafer, and cook on that, but that's not likely to happen in my garage--or anywhere else with an oxygen atmosphere.

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#54

Post by nate_meurer »

joezydeco wrote: post #26
_ea1k wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to find data, but it sounds like the grill temp could range as high as 425 F.

Recipes vary, but many go up to 375F (at least in this McD engineering document) https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/9dQcRSZ8TMeeM7Y8Lx6w I want to believe that teflon is indeed totally inert until 500F, but somehow I just don't trust that. It's the low-temp PFOA leakage into the product I'm looking at here, not the fumes released at higher temps. If the wrappers are doing it at ambient, what's happening at cooking te…

Absolutely, don't trust it. The fact of Teflon's extreme toxicity at temperatures commonly encountered in cooking is undisputed. Quoting from http://www.ewg.org/research/canaries-kitchen/teflon-offgas-s...:

> The lowest temperature at which nonstick coatings have been reported to kill birds in a peer-reviewed study is 396°F (202°C)

That website offers a lot of evidence regarding Teflon's toxicity in other animals as well, but birds seem by far the most sensitive.

Granted now, birds ain't humans. In particular, our unusually massive and efficient livers protect us from a lot of things that readily kill other animals (e.g., aflatoxin, which we withstand in much higher doses than most other creatures).

But this just tells us that our bodies are somehow coping with the poison enough to allow our survival. It doesn't tell us the poison is harmless to us, and IMO fluorocarbon toxicity in humans has been woefully understudied.

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#55

Post by dpark »

joezydeco wrote: post #44
dpark wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Given the number of people paranoid about teflon, I'd expect someone would have demonstrated the danger at lower temperatures by now if it exists.

That's we thought about the wrappers.

3M agreed 15 years ago to phase out PFOA. We know (and knew) these chemicals were dangerous. Teflon has been heavily studied and widely used and we still don't have any evidence that it's dangerous.

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#56

Post by VLM »

dpark wrote: post #37
VLM wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you pre-heat them in the oven. This freaks people out who've never done it. Whaa ... you're sticking a pan in an oven thats turned on? Because if you do that to a cheap stamped steel and plastic pan, the plastic handle will melt off. There's a reason CI pans have expensively attached solid cast iron handles and not bolted on plastic handles... You seasoned the pan by heating it to 400F in an oven till it s…

Heating my oven up to use a pan on the stove seems ridiculously inefficient. Also I don't sear at 400. That seems way to low for most things I'd cook in cast iron. Also, I've not once used barkeepers friend on my stainless. It tends to clean up fine with a scotchbright pad. But I mostly use teflon pans these days.

Oh I donno most of the energy going into stovetop ends up as air currents rising to the ceiling and the insulation is pretty good in my sealed oven. Also its very cheap to heat air (compared to water or iron) so it doesn't take much energy to heat that enclosed well insulated oven. I have the EE gear to do it and I'm almost tempted to figure out which takes more KWh, in my infinite spare time.

I season my CI to 400 and as you raise the temp more smokes off so I'd have seasoning problems taking CI to red heat. CI is cheap, cheaper than disposable teflon pans, so owning an unseasoned (probably rusty) one for 1500F steaks and one with glassy seasoning for my wife to cook her eggs is totally realistic. I have SS for high heat.

If you ever need help cleaning stainless, the powder helps. The thing with scotchbright pads is endless news released explaining that after the first use they have more bacteria than a truck stop bathroom...

Teflon is super expensive in the sense of my not being rich enough to shop at walmart. I've been cooking a long time and after throwing out 10 to 20 formerly non-stick pans I bought lifetime SS and CI. So lemme get this straight, I've been buying $50 non-stick pans roughly every year for 20 years thats $1000 of pans sitting in landfills, yet I can buy stainless alclad for only $150 that will last my descendants until at least the year 5000 if not longer? Sign me up! I'm too poor to buy $50 pans I can only afford the $150 pans.

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#57

Post by gumby »

Arizhel wrote: post #42
gumby wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about how these cast iron pans need to work. They have a high thermal mass so once hot will have a nice uniform temperature...but you will have to wait for that to happen. A thinner pan will heat much faster but will be liable to hot spots. I prefer a thinner pan myself[+] but I understand why people like the cast iron. [+] one thing about those pans: the idea of a "seasoned" pan, with old, rancid oil molecules…

>A thinner pan will heat much faster but will be liable to hot spots. No, it won't (unless you're talking about a thinner cast iron pan). Cast iron has terrible thermal conductivity. A thinner pan made of a better metal, such as aluminum or copper, won't have hot spots. IMO, the best pans are stainless steel, with plates of copper and/or aluminum in the bottom for even heat distribution. Stainless steel looks nice (u…

Yes, I meant thinner cast iron pans, as that had been brought up in the post I was replying to. Apologies for not being clear.

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#58

Post by gumby »

zepto wrote: post #43
rhcom2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I once swallowed some strips of teflon tape (settling an argument with a friend...) and they were bright white and intact (sharp edges where cut were still sharp) on the way out. Oh god, thank goodness it didn't cut up your insides on the way out.

How do you know it didn't?

Ha ha! When I said "sharp" I meant "clearly defined" -- i.e. not broken down or visibly affected by the digestive process.

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#59

Post by dpark »

VLM wrote: post #56
dpark wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heating my oven up to use a pan on the stove seems ridiculously inefficient. Also I don't sear at 400. That seems way to low for most things I'd cook in cast iron. Also, I've not once used barkeepers friend on my stainless. It tends to clean up fine with a scotchbright pad. But I mostly use teflon pans these days.

Oh I donno most of the energy going into stovetop ends up as air currents rising to the ceiling and the insulation is pretty good in my sealed oven. Also its very cheap to heat air (compared to water or iron) so it doesn't take much energy to heat that enclosed well insulated oven. I have the EE gear to do it and I'm almost tempted to figure out which takes more KWh, in my infinite spare time. I season my CI to 400 a…

> Oh I donno most of the energy going into stovetop ends up as air currents rising to the ceiling and the insulation is pretty good in my sealed oven. Also its very cheap to heat air (compared to water or iron) so it doesn't take much energy to heat that enclosed well insulated oven. I have the EE gear to do it and I'm almost tempted to figure out which takes more KWh, in my infinite spare time.

But you're going to use the oven and the stove, so this seems really inefficient to me. There's also a lot of stamped steel and metal racks inside my oven that has to get to temperature. The oven pulls a lot of electricity into large heating elements and still takes 15 or so minutes to fully pre-heat. I'm not at all sure that heating, say, 20 pounds of steel to 400 degrees is an efficient way to heat a pan.

> If you ever need help cleaning stainless, the powder helps. The thing with scotchbright pads is endless news released explaining that after the first use they have more bacteria than a truck stop bathroom...

I guess I don't believe that. I squeeze my sponges out so they fully dry, and I occasionally send them through the dishwasher. I'm not very concerned about the sanitation of my sponge, especially since I'm cleaning with soap, which should carry any germs off the dishes when I rinse. I'm also not clear what the alternative is. I'm going to scrub my dishes with cotton cloths?

> Teflon is super expensive in the sense of my not being rich enough to shop at walmart. I've been cooking a long time and after throwing out 10 to 20 formerly non-stick pans I bought lifetime SS and CI. So lemme get this straight, I've been buying $50 non-stick pans roughly every year for 20 years thats $1000 of pans sitting in landfills, yet I can buy stainless alclad for only $150 that will last my descendants until at least the year 5000 if not longer? Sign me up! I'm too poor to buy $50 pans I can only afford the $150 pans.

My only problem with teflon durability is other people. I've had $25 teflon pans last for a decade. I've also had $50 teflon pans get ruined after a week from people using metal utensils on my new pans. :(

I have plenty of stainless cookware that I use when it feels appropriate (e.g. searing). I have cast iron as well, but while I'd like it to work well, I've generally not had much luck. I can get it seasoned, but I have trouble getting it clean without destroying the seasoning. I also haven't found it to be nearly as nonstick as teflon unless I use a lot of oil (which I don't actually mind, but my wife does).

Re: Troubling chemicals found in wide range of fast-food wrappers

#60

Post by ars »

ScottBurson wrote: post #30
gumby wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about thermal printer receipts? Most are coated with BPA. BPA on thermal paper is indeed a worry (and of course most those "BPA-free" bottles use a different bisphenol plasticizer, just not bisphenol-A). > How about the fact that most McDonalds grill their burgers on grills that are covered with disposable teflon sheets? They don't tell the public that. But a teflon sheet? Teflon is so tightly linked that it is…

The breakdown products of Teflon are also toxic to the prostate, as I found out personally once by eating lots of eggs scrambled in a Teflon skillet. I avoid it now.

Sorry, but that's pretty much impossible. The breakdown products of Teflon don't show up until temperatures at which your eggs would be charcoal.

Teflon will not break down until temperature above 500F 260C - and if you were cooking your eggs that hot you were doing it wrong.

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