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.
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 at all!) are nearly always based on confounded observational studies and/or animal models at doses that may not bear any relationship to the doses you're being exposed to in real life, the claims for any particular item are usually presented out of context. For example, is exposure at X<10 parts per billion compound Y meaningful, as a human who lives in the real world? Typically, nobody knows, but you can nearly always find an "expert" who will confidently claim that any exposure is "dangerous."
Skepticism and awareness of risk magnitude is essential when reading stuff like this. Academics who specialize in obscure areas love to get their name in the press, and the easiest way to do that is to go to a reporter and make vague and irresponsible claims about risks to human health, even if those risks are very, very small. [1]
For what it's worth, I have a Teflon pan, I've used black plastic spatulas in the past, and I'm not worried about it. Compared to the reasons I already know that I'm likely to die, these things are irrelevant.
[1] Case in point: I knew a tenured professor at a prestigious university who was absolutely convinced that if we all continued to eat beef, we'd be looking at an epidemic of vCJK (aka Mad Cow Disease). Saw a lecture from this person on the subject over a decade ago now, where the risks were presented as looming and absolute. We're still eating beef. Guess what hasn't happened since then?
> Academics who specialize in obscure areas love to get their name in the press, and the easiest way to do that is to go to a reporter and make vague and irresponsible claims about risks to human health, even if those risks are very, very small.
I won't deny that many such academics exist. And yet...
The numerous successful academics at reputable universities that I know (including me) are uniformly mortified when our names are associated with mistaken interpretations in the press. Some of us (including me) simply stop doing press interviews because it happens so often.
If you want to find an incentive to get undeserved attention, I recommend you look at economic incentives within the press itself. Too much time pressure, not enough training, desperate need to gather attention to sell ads. All the opposite of the academic world.
> The numerous successful academics at reputable universities that I know (including me) are uniformly mortified when our names are associated with mistaken interpretations in the press. Some of us (including me) simply stop doing press interviews because it happens so often.
Absolutely! You're one of the good ones! I just wish you were in the majority. :-(
Edit: that's unfair. I don't know if you're in the majority or minority. I want to believe that most academics are still just silently plugging away and doing good work. It just really feels like things have shifted to the huckster side of the spectrum, and/or that is what is rewarded.
The hucksters would be over represented in the media for obvious reasons, and if you are not an academic, then you would primarily be exposed to academics via the media. Hundreds of thousands of academics doing great work, you only hear from a few dozen of them.
I was an academic in a past life. I left before I made it a profession, but I spent long enough there to see what I'm talking about. The people with the most successful careers get there by getting press, which doesn't usually correlate with academic rigor.
That said, I grant your broader point about selection bias.
> If you want to find an incentive to get undeserved attention
I think social media - such as HN comments that shoot down almost every OP without fail - is by far the best example? Most comments on social media on such things seek attention for being smarter-than-though and have no basis in anything, including the comment at the top of this thread by 'gidmkhealthnerd'.
> All the opposite of the academic world.
The pure academic world and the evil Media! If you're an academic, maybe we can something better than joining the mob against the bogeyman.
Agreed. So much hyperventilating about risks that, in context (e.g., driving, open water swimming, alcohol, tylenol), are infinitesimally small. Risk is a difficult subject for lay people to understand, and there are many professions built entirely on that human weakness.
”When PTFE is heated above 450 °C the pyrolysis products are different and inhalation may cause acute lung injury. Symptoms are flu-like (chills, headaches and fevers) with chest tightness and mild cough. Onset occurs about 4 to 8 hours after exposure to the pyrolysis products of PTFE.”
There is basically no safe limit for these chemicals — EPA limit for drinking water is 4 ppt. U.S. residents already have average blood PFAS levels to the tune of 4000 ppt.
Indeed. When was the last time you left your nonstick pan sitting on a cooktop with nothing in it, for hours?
If you're the kind of person to leave empty pans burning for that long, I'd be more worried about cognitive decline and/or the risk you'll die in a fire of your own making.
These so-called perfluorochemicals are toxic to humans at single-digit parts per trillion.
If you live in the US, chances are your blood already contains these chemicals at 4,000 ppt or greater (four thousand parts per trillion is the nationwide average).
> These so-called perfluorochemicals are toxic to humans at single-digit parts per trillion.
No, they aren't. At least, not in the way you're interpreting the word "toxic".
> If you live in the US, chances are your blood already contains these chemicals at 4,000 ppt or greater
The fact that you're telling me that I'm currently thriving with 1000x the "toxic" dose you just quoted should tell you that at least one of the statements is exaggerated.
Again, there are people out there who will tell you that any exposure to certain chemicals is "toxic". These people are not worth listening to.
A pan left on the stove will turn red, and it is an accident that happens with some regularity. This issue is a lot like ground fault protectors: a rare accident that could be avoided by never interacting with a product in a certain way nonetheless occurs, and can only be eliminated through technical means. Just imagine that you're at your parent's house, and you look over at a glowing pan. Oops, you have a headache...
Old folks, with a fine case of white matter decline. Distracted folks, because the baby just threw up. Sick folks, whose processing power is a bit covided. Young folks doing stupid things, possibly on a video dare.
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.
Or we could recognize that lapses of judgement are something every human is capable of and demand such outrageous things that our cookware remains safe at any temperature a reasonable stovetop can produce. Really it shouldn't just be safe but also not break the cookware.
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.
I don't think a regular stovetop can get a pan to 450°C, my gas stove gets an empty pan to about 300°C maximum. It doesn't happen in normal situations, if it happens it probably means you forgot your pan on the stove. Heating Teflon at 300°C for several hours is bad, but personally, in that situation, I would worry more about causing a house fire.
Teflon flu is a thing, but it is relatively rare, especially considering how widespread Teflon pans are. That's a few hundred cases per year in the US, by comparison, there are about 1000x more house fire, with cooking equipment being a leading cause.
Teflon pans are shit even if they don't poison you because they are too easy to break and even if you treat them carefully they never last very long.
But you should also consider that only one or a few people championing for change is how safty has historically improved. We have had too many cases of industries knowingly poisinging people for profits while funding studies that say everything is fine and marginalizing the few reasearches who have morals and don't just go after the biggest profits to discard concerns like this just because there is only one person championing them.
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.
After careful research, it turns out this conspiracy was actually started as a sales promotion by Spatula City! I have just as much evidence of this as most other theories
To be fair to people, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to cope with the fact that a plurality or even most papers that come out may be found to be completely un-reproducible. For low stakes things like getting rid of a plastic spatula or cutting board, there is a sub-$20 cost to get rid of them and believe it is right (even if it ends up being wrong), while the cost of not believing and the paper being right is a massively increased chance of cancer. Science will likely never have its reckoning with reality, people will just believe in it less and less until it becomes background noise like everything else.
For some things maybe, but usually there's an option where the risk is pretty negligible. I feel pretty confident we're not going to declare wooden spatulas to be a massive health concern.
There's a risk for wooden ones that are glued, specifically bamboo, or finished with something toxic. You should probably stick to ones made from a single piece of hardwood and are unfinished.
There's also a risk that any cracks will fill with bacteria.
TLDR; unfinished wood that is rinsed and dried on all sides will naturally trap and kill bacteria as it dries. Any finish interferes with this process.
It's actually very easy to cope. Imagine that all your biases and intuitions are more correct than any given study, but why imagine it when it's already true.
Trillions invested, decades wasted by global institutions and here my Ego outdoes them all in factual accuracy with an offhand 30 second post. What's there to not like?
This is so true. Trying to explain to lay people how garbage peer review is (I show them my accepted NeurIPS paper reviews as evidence of how bad it is) tough. Most people imagine that (especially at the highest levels) that folks are independently reproducing results or at least doing something more than running ChatGPT on the paper. It's exactly the opposite - peer review is a joke.
The number one thing that made me mistrust scientists/science was doing it myself. I realized that they are not the arbiters of truth that Plato/Aristotle tried to make them out to be. The allegory of the cave/allegory of the divided line were fake/complete lies - and most of western philosophy implicitly acts as "footnotes" on these wrongful ideas.
As the secret of science-as-slightly-better-than-chance gets out to more and more, existing anti-intellectualism is supercharged. It's not just attacks of "cultural/postmodern neo-marxism" against your comparative literature department - it's claims of systemic academic fraud of your whole STEM field laboratories because it became known to the public that everyone cut corners so that they could be one step ahead in the academic careerist rat race.
The idea that those who engage is a "dialectical" fashion of academic style education are more "correct" or "see reality for how it is" compared to others.
I am firmly an Epistemology Anarchist - that is I agree with almost everything Paul feyerband ever wrote. I don't believe that knowledge/truth is influenced by the method for which it is found. Real, reproducible truth is found all the time outside of traditional academic or scientific norms/methods. The medium is firmly not the message and Marshall McLuhan is a quack.
Basically, when Plato says "the farmer should not rule" I respond with "neither should the philosopher or the so called philosopher king"
That is not how it works. You should ask if being for or against is more socially accepted. If everyone cooks in teflon it must be double plus good for your health.
What you're quoting is satire of serious commentary. Few people unironically take it to such an extreme. But the undertone it's mocking is absolutely real and persistent.
Not everyone on 4chan is a flaming bigot but yet the community as a while gets (rightfully) judged for allowing it in their midst. Why are lesser forms of poor behavior not also reflective of the community?
Ah the ol' satire defense. Even a watered-down version of that isn't reflective of a large majority of the people here, so your statement still doesn't stand. Everywhere else, HN has a reputation for being hyper-critical and dismissive of almost everything. So much so, that this article which is essentially "don't burn plastic" has many, many comments discussing caveats, the single study, and vagueness...
Metal spatulas cause damage to frying pans. How do I know which is worse, the plastic melting off my black spatula or the non-stick coating scraping off my frying pan?
I suppose I could go cast iron, but I'm sure I can find a study saying those are terrible too.
I recently learned how to cook non-stick with my stainless steel pan [1]. Needless to say it's a bit more involved, but I felt more accomplished when I figured out how to cook with it.
Pros: SS can go right in the dishwasher, it's safe & you can use metal spatula, no worry about loss of efficacy over the years.
Cons: It takes a minute more to prep, harder to clean (sides/edges aren't non-stick)
Personally, between this option and carbon-steel pre-seasoned, I see no reason to own Teflon pans.
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.
You need fat on 'nonstick' too. This is another common myth.
Sure, your T-Fal pan will "release a fried egg" instantly for the first 20~30 fried eggs, but then they will start sticking as the coating naturally erodes into your food and your body (including the adhesives that make a 'non-stick' surface adhere to metal). A splash of olive oil is all you need, and olive oil it is one of the healthiest foods out there.
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.
> Needless to say it's a bit more involved, but I felt more accomplished when I figured out how to cook with it.
The rituals and sense of accomplishment. Teflon is very convenient, when it fails you buy a new one, RVS takes a bit more expertise and cast iron is even more of an adventure, it gets better over time, last many generations. It is different in that it heats very slowly but also stays hot when you put it on the table. Nice for slow dining and/or foods that don't stay warm for long. If the handle is also iron you can put it in the oven. You get to cook different dishes that go from the stove in the oven.
You don't have to get cast-iron necessarily. Try carbon-steel. My mother doesn't like cast iron because of the maintenance required, and we don't use non-stick for the alleged health issues.
Got a bunch of carbon-steel cookware and she loves it.
Or do you perform a quick season on the cooktop right before frying / searing? In that case, you could also use stainless steel cookware, which is even less maintenance than carbon steel.
Isn’t carbon steel more maintenance heavy than cast iron? I was always told that you always need to coat carbon steel after use otherwise it will oxidize, while cast iron has a protective polymerized coating that helps it to resist that naturally, and in my experience this has held true where CS equipment oxidizes readily (and stains from acids) while cast iron has more leeway due to the initial coating.
All non-stick frying pans die within a year or so. We recently took the plunge and invested in a stainless steel one. Yes, it takes some (very little) time to adjust your cooking style, but that thing comes with a lifetime guarantee and you don't have to worry about accidentally scratching the surface. Win-win.
Stainless steel can and will stick to some food, but a good one can hold very high amounts of heat and will heat up very evenly.
I think at the end, it boils down to cooking style and preference. We use both (non-stick and stainless steel), and some foods are easier to prepare in one w.r.t to other, however, nothing is impossible in either.
All non stick coatings require care though. Never scrape with metal, do not wash in the dishwasher, and do not overheat.
The rule 0 of item maintenance is, "if you care for your item, your item cares for you when you need it".
cast iron pans contain two materials, the seasoning (oxidized and polymerized food oils, occasionally oxidized iron) and the pan itself (an iron-carbon-silicon alloy, potentially with impurities).
some minor outputs of food oil oxidation/polymerization are believed to be probable carcinogens. these compounds will be present in all food cooked on any surface. this varies more significantly based on your food choice and preparation method than your cookware selection. if you're eating, you're consuming oxidized and polymerized food oils.
the pan itself could potentially contribute iron to your food, or molecular variants like rust or magnetite (oxidized iron). this iron isn't harmful. you're more likely to be deficient than have too much iron. in fact, cooking with iron is occasionally advocated as a way to supplement iron nutrition, to treat iron-deficient anemia.
there are potential impurities in the iron alloy of the pan. most impurities are removed by the foundry process as 'slag'. when iron is heated to molten temperature, everything reactive will burn off or evaporate. other metals will float or precipitate. slag is removed before casting, but some may remain mixed - these will be oxides of foundry inputs used to regulate the melt such as calcium, magnesium, aluminum, and barium. these are controlled to low fractions, but even so are nontoxic or nutritious when ingested. if you're using metal cookware, there is some slag in your cookware.
i just now tried to find a study indicating some harmful property of cast iron but i couldn't find one.
just stop using plastic to cook. it's not hard, and it's not expensive. it's even easier than being miserable on the internet
No they don't. How can you even say that with a straight face? Scuffing the surface != damage.
There's a big difference between cooking on a piece of metal, and cooking on a multiple layers of chemicals invented by the aerospace industry; or overheating a metal spatula or overheating utensils made from recycled electronics' plastic.
This idea that it is impossible to cook without all this over-engineered, hyper-marketed, disposable, mass-produced QVC crap is utter nonsense.
Nobody needs teflon, or nylon, or plastic too cook with. You can cook perfectly fine with centuries old technology. The same way the people who invented the recipes cooked centuries ago.
Seriously lol, the effort vs risk ratio is insanely in favor of getting rid getting rid of plastic spatulas. Though, it should be pretty obvious even before this study that plastic, heat, and ingesting the result do not go together.
you're only focusing on the immediate, literal replacement cost though; what if (and there are as credible papers as this one, stating so) using a metal spatula on my teflon pan causes it to get into my food and that's what will kill me? Or various metals are an even bigger health risk?
>> should be pretty obvious even before this study that plastic, heat, and ingesting the result do not go together.
Metal spatulas are also just better. Plastic or silicone ones are like safety scissors, so of course you need non-stick pans. I don't run into sticking with cast iron and a metal spatula.
You are using them for the wrong purpose... Plastic spatulas are useful for sauces, batter, anything of that consistency. Of course, if you are already holding it in your hand and you need to flip a pancake, there's nothing wrong with it...
Similarly, there are plenty of different metal spatulas for different purposes, like decorating cakes or cooking on one big stove-top (as opposed to individual burners, that's something you see in the restaurant kitchens more often than in private use). And, again, you don't have to use any specific one for any specific task. My mom never had a spatula and did everything with a single chef knife she had, and it still worked for her.
At the very least, there’s about a 100% chance of microplastics getting into your food when using these things under heat. You can argue about the risks all day, but I imagine most people would want to avoid this bioaccumulation if possible.
This is my take as well. Can I avoid microplastics? No. Can I make simple household decisions that minimize my intake? Yes. Stainless pots and pans, stainless or wooden tools, stainless silverware, ceramic plates and bowls.
Yes, it takes slightly longer to clean some stuff up, but at least I'm not eating as much plastic/PTFE.
Try out carbon steel if you haven't. Season it once and it's essentially non-stick -- all I do is give mine a light rinse for a few seconds and then towel dry.
Carbon steel is not nonstick without adding oil. Also you can’t use it with acidic foods. I actually prefer stainless steel most of the time, the sticking is more of a feature for many foods since it promotes browning. (But I do use basically every type of pan for different things)
Oh interesting, that's a point I hadn't considered -- do people really cook in non-stick pans without any sort of oil? I've never owned one so genuinely didn't realize people did that. My Mediterranean family brought me up to use olive oil liberally!
And also true re: acidic foods -- I've got a couple stainless, but mainly use my enameled cast iron or clay (tagine) for tomato based dishes.
> do people really cook in non-stick pans without any sort of oil?
Definitely!
As much as I generally love it, e.g. pancakes with olive oil sound like a dubious idea, taste-wise.
Regarding frying things in olive oil, I was also under the impression that it's not particularly heat-stable and unhealthy substances can start forming at relatively low temperatures?
Oh lol, yeah, I wouldn't use olive oil on pancakes. That's definitely a butter situation.
As for high heat with olive oil, I'm not sure about it being unhealthy or not. I just found this overview [1], and it seems like there isn't great evidence. I again hadn't considered it, since it's something my ancestors have done for thousands of years. Sample size of one family, but my grandmother lived to her 90s and my great-aunt is still walking around Paris in her mid-90s!
It's important to understand that coloring plastics change their characteristics, though (I'll add the link if I can find it again).
Also, plastics have quality grades from "that's good stuff" to "this thing smells funny in a bad way". We have some IKEA food tweezers which use black plastic molded on steel prongs. It's stamped with "+150 degrees C" and the black is hazy, like it's colored with a dye or pigment, and plastic is hard like bakelite.
OTOH, I have used other "black" spatulas which are uniform in color, but neither as sturdy, nor smell neutral.
We have silicone counterparts to these items too. They're more rubbery, but they have hard plastic spines inside so, they don't flex.
Why do you trust gidmkhealthnerd, a psuedonym who likely knows nothing about it and offers nothing but a personal opinion, over the post of someone who studied it and gathered actual experimental evidence?
How do you know which person is the pseudo-intellectual. At least one gained professional expertise in chemistry and did an actual scientific experiment. The other posted their 'opinion' on Threads saying it is all wrong.
Yes, that's my point. I'm complaining about the one idiot pointing to the other idiot crapping on science and boasting about eating toxins being top comment on this fractally appalling story.
"I don't find the data personally convincing" is a poor retort. And that's all he says, without any further information.
Is his post supposed to be taken seriously?
If this person is a fact checker, he's probably run into plenty of people who would say "I don't find the data personally convincing" to explain why they don't trust vaccines.
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...