|
|
How Health Friendly is your cookware?
Choosing a cookware can be a tough job both for one's own
health, as well as that of the family. Quality cookware helps you maintain
good health and, in some cases, even enhances flavor. Before making your next
kitchen purchase, consider the reactivity of various tools and cookware and,
whenever possible, favor inert or non-reactive. Or, as second choice, use
moderately reactive pots and utensils. As possible, avoid more reactive
cookware.
Listing health friendly cookware:
-
Earthenware and ceramic: These cookware are inert and
emit a far-infrared heat, that's most effective and beneficial heat for
cooking, which enables a full range of subtle flavors to emerge. Excellent
for lengthy simmering and baking
-
Glass: coffee pots and casserole dishes are inert and
affordable. Favor glass containers for storing food
-
Bamboo: wooden spoons, chopsticks and crockery are
non-reactive and modestly priced.
-
Enamel: With proper care, a fine enamel pot lasts a
lifetime, whereas inexpensive enamel cookware from variety stores has such a
thin enamel layer that it chips easily and is not worth its purchase price.
Once chipped, discard enamel kitchenware or enamel fragments will find their
way into your food and the underlying metal will react with food. If it’s
affordable, favor enamel pots.
-
Stainless steel: It is the least
reactive metal, and the most versatile and healthful cookware option. Once
stainless steel has been scratched, through normal scouring, the leaching of
metallic ions is more noticeable.
-
Cast iron: Besides durability and even heat
distribution, cast
iron cookware carry the advantage of ensuring that the eaters in your
house get enough which the body needs to produce red blood cells—as it seeps
off the cookware into food in small amounts.
-
Copper: One other surface favored by chefs for sauces and sautés
is copper, which excels at quick warm-ups and even heat distribution. Since
copper can leak into food in large amounts when heated, the cooking surfaces
are usually lined with tin or stainless steel.
Re-active Kitchenware: a Health Alert
Non-stick Cookware: The first non-stick pans coated with
polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), better known as Teflon, were introduced in
the 1960s by DuPont, who marketed this convenient, easy-to-clean cookware as
a revolution for the American kitchen. But now, 50 years later, experts are
sounding major alarms about the potential dangers of cooking food in
non-stick cookware. Studies have linked perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a
chemical used in non-stick PTFE coatings, to countless health problems
including
cancer,
infertility,
thyroid problems and ADHD in children. When you breathe kitchen air
polluted with fumes from overheated Teflon, you're at risk for developing
flu-like symptoms (yes, "Teflon flu"). The long-term effects of routine
exposure to Teflon fumes, and from Teflon flu itself, have not been
adequately studied.
Tips to use nonstick, to minimize toxicity
- Never preheat nonstick cookware at high heat -- empty pans can
rapidly reach high temperatures. Heat at the lowest temperature
possible to cook your food safely.
- Don't put nonstick cookware in an oven hotter than 500 degrees.
- Use an exhaust fan over the stove.
|
Aluminum: Cast aluminum is more stable and preferable to
thin aluminum pans. Rather than wrapping a baked potato in aluminum foil,
consider baking it directly on the oven rack or placing it in a covered
casserole dish.
Plastic:
Storage of food in plastic is not as much a problem as cooking in plastic, but
even in this situation, glass containers with plastic lids would be safer than
containers made entirely of plastic. The worst places to use plastic are in the
microwave or in a pot of boiling water. You are safest microwaving in unleaded
ceramic or tempered glass containers (like Pyrex), but not in plastic, even if
the plastic is a harder, polycarbonate variety (number 7 on the recycling logo).
According to The Mail, U.K. "Pregnant women who eat food that has been wrapped
in plastic could make their unborn baby obese in later life, according to new
research. Chemicals in plastic food wrapping and plastic feeding bottles are
believed to interfere with the body hormones that regulate fat levels and help
prevent obesity."
Choose your cookware from among the old-fashioned kitchen stand-bys - cast iron
(under most circumstances), stainless steel, tempered glass, unleaded ceramic,
and porcelain. All are still the best choices for cookware materials.
The most commonly used materials today - aluminum and plastic - can have
detrimental effects on your health and should be avoided.
Reference:
- WF Team
Dated 23 August 2011
Related Links
|
|
|
|
|
