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Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

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Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#841

Post by TheRealPomax »

mossTechnician wrote: post #829
TheRealPomax wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote Chris Rock: if you're old and you die in an accident, you died of old age, not "that specific accident". If your mind's going, and that makes you do something that'll kill you, your mind going is what killed you.

And for distracted folks in the same example, it's what... The baby? If a company knowingly uses a toxic chemical, it shouldn't be everybody else's fault they did that.

Tell me you haven't had a baby without telling me you haven't had a baby.

You are fucking 10x more aware of bullshit you're doing just to keep baby safe. Probably more like 100x, really. Nothing focusses your mind like having CREATED A HUMAN THAT MUST BE KEPT SAFE AT ALL COST.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#842

Post by kazinator »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #169
shiroiushi wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem here is that many people use non-stick cookware, and metal spatulas will scratch them up badly. Plastic or rubber spatulas don't do that. Of course, you can say that they shouldn't use non-stick cookware, but they are, so...

> you can say that they shouldn't use non-stick cookware Using metal spatulas with non-stick is a big no due to the scratching. Ideally, you should throw away any non-stick cookware that gets a scratch on it. You should use silicone spatulas instead.

The big "no" with non-stick is using steel wool scrubbers for cleaning. That and using sharp instruments like forks.

A nice, smoothly polished stainless steel spatula with round corners and a slightly convex edge shouldn't do anything to your non-stick pan.

You have to deliberately be trying to damage the non-stick surface with such a spatula to do any harm.

If the non-stick surface actually working, you shouldn't be using any force to scrape anything off. And there's margin for that.

I use one of those 5-in-1 painter's tools to remove grime from just about any surface without damaging it. I would cheerfully use it to take a dried paint splatter off a $100K Steinway. :)

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#843

Post by MengerSponge »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #824
MengerSponge wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tritan is still plastic. It's BPA free, but there are lots of other estrogenic compounds in the world.

What issues does Tritan have? Tritan is used in the medical industry for passing blood and other fluids safely without contamination. HN seems to have huge unfounded FUD around anything plastic related even when there's no scientific evidence.

Tritan uses TPP, which may be as bad as BPA?

Toxicological evidence takes a long time to acquire. By it's very nature it's a lagging indicator. Remember when everybody freaked out about BPAs? That's because good studies showed the accumulation of those compounds in the body, and the potential health issues it could drive.

And what about now that we have all these BPA free plastics? Most of them have replaced the BPA with other compounds. They haven't been studied, so there isn't evidence against them. But the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

Finally: what, in their long and storied history, has led you to believe that 3M, DuPont, or Eastman are acting in the best interest of your health? Because their incentive structure favors wealth creation, not population health.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#844

Post by kazinator »

Etheryte wrote: post #180
ArnoVW wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a wooden one? Has the added benefit of being part of the short carbon cycle.

Wood is not good if you want to handle raw meat, since it's fibrous it makes it pretty easy to eventually cross contaminate something you eat. It's the same reason wooden cutting boards are usually avoided if you're working with raw meat. Every single time, the risk is small, but over time, the dice rolls add up.

When cooking meat, I use two pairs of chopsticks: the raw chopsticks and the cooked chopsticks. The raw chopsticks are used to loaded into the pan and to flip it once. Once that batch is flipped I use the cooked chopsticks.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#845

Post by kazinator »

chithanh wrote: post #553
iamacyborg wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food poisoning is generally something you know you’ve got.

Really? It's one thing to understand that whatever pathogen you were infected with is (also) foodborne. But tracking the infection to something particular which you ate is generally quite hard, and it is even harder to track accidental contamination. And many people do not understand where actual danger comes from. For example it is a really bad idea to rinse raw chicken meat. Yet this practice is still widespread. h…

That page and its video are bat shit stupid.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#846

Post by mossTechnician »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #841
mossTechnician wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for distracted folks in the same example, it's what... The baby? If a company knowingly uses a toxic chemical, it shouldn't be everybody else's fault they did that.

Tell me you haven't had a baby without telling me you haven't had a baby. You are fucking 10x more aware of bullshit you're doing just to keep baby safe. Probably more like 100x, really. Nothing focusses your mind like having CREATED A HUMAN THAT MUST BE KEPT SAFE AT ALL COST.

I'm confused by your interest in shifting the discussion away from the company that has enough money and lawyers to know better, and back towards anyone but them.

Can't we discuss the company's responsibility?

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#847

Post by tourmalinetaco »

timr wrote: post #569
dfxm12 wrote: post #484

From gidmkhealthnerd, a scientific fact-checker: Counterpoint: this seems to be the crusade of a single researcher - I don't find the data personally convincing and am still using my black spatula for cooking. https://www.threads.net/@gidmkhealthnerd/post/DBxbQERykRx?hl...

That's true of nearly everything in this space. You'll find lots and lots of comments below about PFAS and Teflon pans, for example, ranging from factual-but-misleading (e.g. "Teflon pans can emit harmful gases when overheated") to bald assertions (multiple variations on "Teflon pans are harmful to your health") with no context or specificity to the claim. Setting aside the fact that the purported harms (if specified…

It’s similar to climate scares, a decade ago people were saying that various coastal cities would be underwater by now and they aren’t even close. It’s alarmist propaganda from bored people. Sure, the climate is important, just as PFAS and mad cow all are, but pushing what amounts to conspiracy theories doesn’t solve it. And, personally, “climate change” isn’t even the big issue when we have unimaginably large trash islands in the ocean. First we have to solve multinational corporate pollution before we can worry about terraforming our planet.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#848

Post by tourmalinetaco »

r00fus wrote: post #715
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually “nonstick” in the cooking context means “nonstick without any added fat”. So a stainless steel pan is never “nonstick”.

Fear of fat has completely killed this country's health. Fat is a necessary part of food. Fat doesn't make you fat, refined sugar does.

Although, I did hear that linoeic acid in excess may be detrimental for brain development (and may be one of a handful of reasons that neurodivergence appears to be on the rise). And more than just refined sugar, excess calories make you fat, which both LA and RS have a tendency towards making us eat in excess.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-019-0061-9

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#849

Post by kazinator »

echoangle wrote: post #195
iamacyborg wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in my late 30’s and have basically forever used wooden chopping boards and wooden utensils. I’ve not gotten sick from home cooking once. I think you might be overstating the potential harm here.

How do you know by what mechanism you’ve become sick? Do you cook that sparsely that you can positively say you’ve never become sick a few days after eating something you’ve cooked?

If you've only been sick with respiratory illnesses that were "going around", you can be about, oh, 100% sure it wasn't from your wooden cutting board.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#850

Post by tourmalinetaco »

darajava wrote: post #819
6510 wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

next level is cast iron, good luck

cast iron is so slow and its seasoning is so tedious to build and maintain. I can only really see good reason to use if you cook a LOT of steak or similar. I exclusively use SS, but am I wrong? What am I missing from CI?

Seasoning cast iron has been rather easy, and you can get preseasoned pans as well. My method is: scrub a new (unseasoned) pan well with hot water and a brillo pad, being sure to thoroughly get into any grooves. This is to remove the wax coating present on some pans and to clean any potential surface rust. From there I preheat my oven to 450°F/230°C with my pan inside, this helps drive off any remaining moisture. Once its to temp I pull the pan out and give it a thin coating of flaxseed oil before putting it in the oven upside down for 30min. I do this 6 times, flipping the pan each time, but really 3-4 times is enough. And any fat is also good, I simply prefer flax because it has the best polymerization, which is a debatable quality. I’m just excessive and cast iron collection is a bit of a hobby. After the initial seasoning all you need to do is store your pans in a thin layer of oil if you won’t use them for long period, but even that isn’t a real problem for properly seasoned pans. I’ve never had a pan I seasoned rust.

As for what you’re missing: nothing for cooking smaller foods, but it is unmatched for baking and frying. I’ve found it to be a lot more capable in keeping oil temps consistent and giving good crusts to pan pizzas and cornbreads. So if deep dish pizzas, breads, seared/fried meats and veggies, and huevos ahogados sound good I’d definitely recommend having at least one 10-12” pan around.

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