Why we love our pots and pans

Have you ever thought about the fact that what we cook our food in can leach into the food as it cooks? What about that Teflon coating on the frying pan? Or the aluminium wok? Copper saucepan, anyone?

It has always been something I’ve been aware of but just used to dismiss, after all, I was sure the Teflon coating couldn’t really come off into my omelette – right?

But a few years ago we became so much more aware of the impact heavy metals can have on our bodies and how they do in fact leach into our food during cooking:

• They can impact our immune system, contributing to autoimmune diseases and chronic pain and inflammation.
• They can affect our nervous system, contributing to neurological disorders like dementia, Parkinson’s disease and other mental health issues.
• And they are really difficult to get rid of, so can linger around in our fat cells

Taking this sobering little lot into account, we got rid of our coated (scratched!) frying pan, the iron wok and the saucepans where the surface was gradually coming off… All gone! We then gradually replaced them with ones that we trust.

So what do we use now?

Good question! We have settled on using the following:

Stainless steel

Our woks, and some saucepans, are stainless steel. They are easy to clean and don’t have a surface that will start to scrub off over time.

Cast iron

The majority of our saucepans are cast iron ceramic coated pans. They will last a lifetime, as they’re so well made and we look after them well. We always dry them after washing to make sure that rust doesn’t form along the top rim of the pan and we don’t use metal utensils for stirring.

Ceramic

Our frying pan is a Green Pan, which has a ceramic coating. It’s durable but we make sure not to use metal utensils when frying.

And the great thing is, now that we’re set up we shouldn’t need to change them much at all, so we’ve made a long term investment both financially as well as for our health!

Want to understand more?

Dr Axe has a couple of great articles:

• 6 Dangers of Conventional Cookware + 4 Best Types of Nontoxic Cookware
• Dangers of Heavy Metals

Dr Russell L Blaylock has chapters of his book “Health and Nutrition Secrets that can save your life” (Health Press ISBN 0-929173-48-1) devoted to heavy metals.