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Have you ever heard the saying that “a person is only as good as his tools”? It has never been truer than in the case of kitchenware.
You usually spend a lot of time thinking about what foods you will cook and whether they are healthy, but give little thought to what you will cook them in.
Regardless of how much organic food you buy or how many healthy recipes you use, even the best food can unknowingly be turned into a poison in the wrong pots or pans.
Harmful pots and pans
Kitchenware exists in different shapes and sizes. They differ not only by these external features, but also by their effect on the properties of food.
Understanding how they affect the composition of food is an important lesson every responsible cook should learn.
Moreover, using the wrong kitchenware not only changes the taste properties of food, but can have catastrophic consequences for your health.
Let’s now take a closer look at which pans and pots you should avoid.
1 Ceramic pots and pans
Ceramic kitchenware may make a nice aesthetic impression, but they also release toxins into your food.
They are made from various kinds of metal, which is then coated with synthetic polymers. These, however, are softer than metals and usually last less than 1 year.
Repeated heating in them then accelerates corrosion and the appearance of scratches.
When that happens, lead, which is added to these coatings to increase their impact resistance and also because it provides color uniformity, begins to leach from the surface into the food.
The amount of lead leaching depends on the manufacturer, but even relatively small doses of lead are harmful to the human body.
2 Aluminum pots and pans
Aluminum vessels have been part of our kitchens for decades, during which they unknowingly caused us health problems.
Nowadays aluminum pots are usually covered with a protective layer, but these linings wear out over time and allow aluminum to escape into our food.
Aluminum cookware is cheap, but the damage to your health really isn’t worth it. When aluminum gets into your body, it accumulates in the brain, nerves, heart, lungs and bones.
The most destructive effects of aluminum are on nerve cells and lead to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia and other damage to the entire nervous system.
So if you want to save money, save it somewhere else, but never on the pots and pans you cook in.
3 Copper pots and pans
Many people like copper cookware because it conducts heat well, which allows fast and even cooking.
However, this convenience comes at a price.
Pieces of exposed copper and toxic nickel from the protective coating are quickly released into food and cause various kinds of allergies.
Moreover, exposure of the body to large doses of copper reduces zinc levels and thus weakens the immune system, disrupts the function of multiple organs and also damages the thyroid gland.
Therefore avoid copper as a material for your pots and pans.
4 Teflon pots and pans
You’ve surely heard about the harmfulness of Teflon pans and pots, but just in case we list them here so they won’t be accidentally forgotten.
The problem with Teflon is that if it is heated above a certain temperature it begins to release strong carcinogens into the food.
Even a small lapse can seriously harm your family’s health.
Healthy alternatives for pots and pans
Now you are probably asking which pots and pans to use?
We have good news for you. There are healthy options and they are:
- Cast iron – have similar non-stick properties to Teflon. They can be used in the oven or on the grill. However, they need to be regularly maintained and rubbed with edible oil.
- Stainless steel – look good, are partly non-stick, lighter than cast iron, resistant to scratches or peeling coatings (since they have none) and last a very long time.
- Glass – similar to stainless, hard glass is a durable material that does not rust and barely releases anything into food.
It must be admitted that every kind of pan and pot to a greater or lesser extent will release some substances into food.
The goal, however, is to minimize this leaching or limit it to substances that do not harm the body – for example a small amount of iron is harmless compared to copper or lead.
