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Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

theatlantic.com

81–90 of 886 posts

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#81
post #59
post #29

...and take the opportunity to ditch the teflon pans while you're at it. They're toxic. https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluor...

This myth needs to die. Teflon is only an issue at temperatures you're just not going to encounter in a kitchen. And if you did encounter such temperature, and you had oil on the pan - well you've poisoned yourself more than the Teflon would!

Most consumer PTFE coatings are declared to be safe up to 450°F. It is trivially easy to heat a pan beyond that temperature on modern gas, electric, and induction ranges in less than ten minutes. The margin of safety is demonstrably nonexistent and it’s wild to me that we just accept this risk constantly, everywhere, anytime we eat food (whether at home or from a restaurant).

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same. I still use cast iron and ceramic though.

I have, very regretfully, stopped using cast iron. Being a man, in a country where I can't easily donate blood, iron load is something that I want to be careful of. It is possible to cook with cast iron in a way that won't leech too much iron into food, just as it is possible to cook with nonstick in a way that won't leech Dupont chemicals. But I'd much rather just use foolproof stainless or ceramic cookware that doe…

Is this comment an implicit endorsement of giving blood as a health benefit because it allows to slough off heavy metals or something? what…? News to me.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#86

I threw out all my pots and pans that have non stick surfaces and replaced them with stainless steel. Same with most kitchen cooking implements. Stainless steel pots and pans are much cheaper, last longer, you can scrub and scrape them and the big upside is you don’t have to consume DuPont non stick chemical coating nor feed it to your children. Despite all the celebrity chefs in the world attempting to sell you thei…

[flagged]

> are you bringing it up for a reason?

This article relates to "hidden dangers of cookware." If he was talking about the vagaries of the solar cycle on Mars, I'd be on your side, as it is, this comes across as reflexive gatekeeping.

> Do people on this site now just read the headlines and then come to comment their stream of consciousness based on the title?

And.. what, precisely, do you think _you're_ doing in this comment? Is it not precisely what you complain about?

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#87
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot pan , cold oil is the trick

Oh! Very grateful for the correction. I do feel that’s a third-degree burn waiting to happen. Are you saying heat the pain to high, then put on the oil? Doesn’t that splash painfully?

Nope since the oil is cold and will take a bit to heat (it doesn't act like water does due to the higher temperature it can handle).

For reference it is how wok cooking is done and they use extremely hot pans/burners. If you're using gas switch off the heat for a second.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The article is nonsense. Only engineering plastics carry UL94 ratings (and if it's got flame retardants in it, it's got a UL94 rating... otherwise no one would go to the expense!) and there are just not a lot of engineering plastics in the waste stream compared to consumer single-use plastics.

The point is that these plastics with flame retardants would go to recycling, and would eventually find their way into cooking utensils made of recycled plastics. Nobody adds the flame retardant there intentionally, but nobody removes the flame retardants from the recycled mass either, at least not in places where plastic recycling is normally done (not the richest countries).

Frankly, the idea of using recycled plastic with no control for its origin for cooking utensils looks weird to me. OTOH it should look like a great opportunity to cut costs, and shoppers very often try to save that last cent as a matter of principle and sport, so...

Coffee machines from reputable makers should be safe, I think.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#89
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This myth needs to die. Teflon is only an issue at temperatures you're just not going to encounter in a kitchen. And if you did encounter such temperature, and you had oil on the pan - well you've poisoned yourself more than the Teflon would!

Most consumer PTFE coatings are declared to be safe up to 450°F. It is trivially easy to heat a pan beyond that temperature on modern gas, electric, and induction ranges in less than ten minutes. The margin of safety is demonstrably nonexistent and it’s wild to me that we just accept this risk constantly, everywhere, anytime we eat food (whether at home or from a restaurant).

So you replace the Teflon with oil, and now your risk is even higher. What did you accomplish?

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#90

The correlation-causation in this article is really rather screwed up. The way it really works for plastic is this: almost all bad plastic is black, but not all black plastic is bad. That's it. There is nothing wrong whatsoever with virgin black plastics. (Well, at least, nothing more than is wrong with plastics in general.) So there is no reason to fear black plastic from reputable sources. The trouble comes in when…

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