The French National Assembly on Thursday unanimously adopted a bill aimed at restricting the manufacture and sale of products containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — also known as PFAS or “forever chemicals.” The MPs, backed by the government, voted to exclude kitchen utensils from the scope of the text.
Thanks to an intense lobbying push, manufacturers of frying pans and saucepans — including the SEB group, which owns Tefal — are exempt from this ban under the proposed law penned by French Green MPs.
Majority groups initially tried to delay the ban on kitchen utensils until 2030 — a timetable refused by the French Green MPs who instead suggested an exemption until 2026.
Sounds great, let’s ban it in every form except the one we literally eat…
Actually it’s in a lot of food wrappers.
And those aren’t as durable as cooking utensils. If you don’t scratch your pan with a metal fork and don’t use it for two decades, it’s apparently somewhat safe. Not according to the companies, I’m not shilling, Last Week Tonight had a point about it on their episode about PFA’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W74aeuqsiU
I’d personally love to not consume any fucking PFAS, but I also understand that this French thing is still a massive step forwards for regulations on the matter.
Tldr it’s still a win
That stuff sticks to (aka reacts with) literally nothing. That’s the point of it. The whole innovation of nonstick cookware was the fact they got it to stick to something. It’s not even dangerous if you ingest it, it doesn’t react with anything so it just comes back out.
What IS dangerous is the by products and intermediate products, as well as the stuff that comes off if you overheat it. (And also, like you said, when they get old)
This whole movement against non-stick is alright, but so many people do it for the wrong reasons. If you have nonstick, just use it and don’t buy nonstick next time. Throwing away perfectly fine cookware like that is like boycotting charmin by flushing down all your remaining rolls in one go and going to the store to buy new toilet paper from another brand.
so it just comes back out.
Eh… does it?
https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-how-long-hazardous-forever-chemicals-pfas-stay-in-blood-2023-3
It can take five hours for your body to filter half the amount of caffeine or alcohol you’ve consumed from your blood. LSD is a bit faster at three hours.
BPA has a similar half-life to caffeine and alcohol, but arsenic can take up to 10 hours.
Toxic metals like lead or radioactive polonium, take months to halfway leave your blood.
But PFAS surpass all of these other substances. Some of the PFAS that have been studied — PFOA, PFOS, and PFHS — can take over seven years to reduce by half in your bloodstream. It’s no wonder they’re called “forever chemicals.”
I still use my non-sticks, but like you said, I’m gonna buy non-PFAS cookware the next time I need to. I’m in no panic about my pans. What people probably should pay more attention to is PFAS in clothing. This might be a tad sensationalist as The Guardian often is, but eh, with a grain of salt: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/jul/02/fashion-chemicals-pfas-bpa-toxic
Yes, the final product comes back out. The final product is PTFE, not PFAS. PTFE is harmless unless degraded or overheated (which is why you shouldn’t do that with non-stick cookware).
To produce PTFE, PFAS are used (or are intermediaries in the process), which is why the production is dangerous, but the product isn’t.
#Some of the PFAS that have been studied — PFOA, PFOS, and PFHS — can take over seven years to reduce by half in your bloodstream. It’s no wonder they’re called “forever chemicals.”
There’s no PTFE in that list.
So?
We’re not talking excretion, we’re talking blood half-life.
Too complex a distinction for a corporate shill?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=9W74aeuqsiU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Careful what you wish for. PTFE is used in liners of a lot of life saving catheters. The stuff that goes I side your heart and brain and saves your life…
I have PTFE and PVDF in my body and I am happy about that.
I’m guessing a DES (stent)?
Yes this and a hernia mesh. Guess there will come more.
You’re just slowly turning into a cyborg.
Its about finding alternatives. Right now there is an immense economic & lobby pressure to not pursue finding alliterative materials.
PTFE is super cheap to produce & is sold with high margins. Financially would be basically impossible to fund research for alternative material, produce it without economies of scale, compete in a saturated market, etc.
Cases like this is exactly why we need representatives of the people to act & pass laws.
Its like with plastic (one use?) products, the mantra was “nothing can be as good as plastic” and it took the market no time to produce better products without plastic. But there is a lot of push back, eg there is absolutely no need for paper straws to get soggy (we have the tech) yet you mostly see only the shitty kind.
Or the example of paper industry, they had the interest to ditch plastic and they did to an extend. Those little transparent windows in envelopes are super cheap cellulose, but a decade ago they were plastic.
Meh. It’s not that dangerous if you use a non-stick pan of good quality. And toss it in the bin as soon as the non-stick surface starts to show signs of scraping…
If you want to avoid this problem altogether you can just buy cast iron or enameled pans. But enamel is a lot stickier (and heavier) than teflon
The problem is that non-stick has been marketed heavily to the point that the majority of cheap pans are non-stick, even though there’s many purposes they’re not suitable for. For example they shouldn’t be used for high heat cooking, but how many people don’t know that? And they’re extremely toxic if the surface is chipped. Using the wrong utensils on the can chip them. Plus, there’s a number of pans out there that make it look like they’re a different material, but actually it’s just the same thing rebranded. So even if people are using them wrong, it’s very understandable why someone who’s a casual cook wouldn’t realize that they’re endangering themselves by using the pans wrong.
Yeah believe me I know all about that. My dad is a materials scientist and has been rambling about us eating Teflon for a few decades now. Using metal utensils with the non stick pans is one of the few ways to truly get yelled at in my parents’ house
It’s not that dangerous if you use a non-stick pan of good quality. And toss it in the bin as soon as …
Yeah, I was also in no panic but
- it’s not that dangerous in the short term, but it stays long term and long term accumulation is still unknown
- toxic waste during manufacture is dangerous - let’s just not do that
- I was annoyed having to replace the non-stick every ten years or so. It may be cheap to buy but it’s expensive over time
- no one follows through with tossing as 🔜 as there are signs of damage or flaking. Pretty much all of us have eaten more Teflon than we should and keep adding more and more
So now I have good stainless and cast iron for about the same price but it could potentially last the rest of my life: reducing toxic chemicals from manufacturing, reducing the amount of forever chemicals accumulating in my body, and saving me money. Even better, by paying attention to the quirks of effective use of these pans, I’ve become a better cook and find the cleanup usually no worse than non-stick
Adding carbon steel to this, because I love my pan, and my mother-in-law (who lives to cook) can use it without arthritis pain. She always used to complain about the cast iron hurting her joints when she lifted our other pans.
What I’m also curious about is the ceramic coated pans. I’ve seen them advertised (I think Green Pan, whatever). I would like a lighter alternative to Le Crouset that I could cook acidic foods in.
I’m somewhat curious as well, but that’s when I reach for stainless over cast iron. There’s a balance there: I think some people overreact when usually cooking acidic stuff is no problem. Of course I also don’t cook long simmering stuff like pasta sauce so I don’t need to pay much attention.
I do also use a crock pot, which is ceramic and has at least some overlap with long cooking acidic foods that may be tainted by stainless or cast iron
I only know what I’ve read online about ceramic:
- generally very safe and non-reactive
- almost as non-stick as non-stick
- a few cheap Chinese knockoffs leached metals but this really shouldn’t be a problem
- harder to damage with utensils than non-stick
- however they don’t last longer, may even be shorter.
My decision was based on wanting something more permanent so I didn’t have to buy it again, and it’s nice to be able to rediscover metal utensils
I presume it’s mostly used in the handles. I don’t think we cook on plastic.
It’s on the non stick coating for a lot of pans and can easily flake off and be ingested if you damage it by using metal utensils. This is why you should never use metal on nonstick.
I have family that makes me rip my hair out over this shit.
They put their non-stick in the oven, They use metal tools on it, and they refuse to replace it when the coating fails and starts coming off.
They denigrate me as some kine of hoity-toity rich man with my “pointless” pain replacements, when they arent getting angry at me for “looking down” on them by saying that their pans unsafe.
Just buy a cast iron or a steel pan for fucks sake!
What’s wrong with using it in the oven?
The teflon coating starts to breakdown at higher temperatures. The pan or box they came in has to state not safe for oven use. Also preheating on the burner can cause it. Food in the pan mostly prevents it from reaching that temperature.
Most Teflon pans used to have plastic handles that dummy proofs them from the oven.
I’m more worried that your family forces you to rip your hair out
I used to work in food service - I remember one day they replaced all the pans with new ones that had a black Teflon coating… about 6 months later, ALL of the black, except a little bit around the edge, was completely gone. Just bare metal. All of it flaked off into our customers’ food.
Were you scraping them with steel wool or something
In a commercial kitchen? I’d bet good money they were using metal utensils.
Teflon isn’t heat-resistant enough to withstand proper frying temperatures for long and actual chefs are going to do an actual sear. If you want non-stick there’s carbon steel or cast iron (as well as proper technique), if you want stick-and-deglaze (yes that’s a thing) use stainless steel. All three are going to out-live your great-grandchildren.
If you want something acid-resistant use a ceramic or stainless pan: Stuff like tomato sauce is going to strip patina off cast iron or carbon steel. Sure, you can just re-do the patina but it’s going to take some cycles before it’s up to its old non-stick properties again. Those non-stick ceramic pans are basically fancy enamel, when they lose their non-stick properties clean them with oxygen bleach that’s going to strip fatty residues out of the tiny dimples in the coating and they’ll be as good as new. Only way to really damage them is to shatter the coating.
That makes a lot of sense.
A bit odd that a commercial kitchen would buy teflon though considering how fragile it is.
I guess incompetent management is incompetent.
You don’t think some probably came off in the dishwasher?
Even so it still goes into the environment forever, per the name.
To be fair: it is mostly inert. But using carbon steel instead has virtually 0 cost and a much longer lifespan(that yourself)
Yes, I never understood the problem with carbon steel cookware. Like, we achieved peak ease of overall use. I want tools like that to be always there, stay the same, and that I don’t have to ever even think about replacing it. Also its appropriate to cook anything in it.
I’ve never done it or had the need but at most what you can do is polish the cooking surface of it somehow became scratched/rough & food gets caught in those spots. But seriously, scratching steel (in the amount that doesn’t immediately go away with normal use) is kinda hard and an achievement.
I think part of the overall problem is that people start cooking in cold steel cookware?
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It’s* the non-stick
Removed by mod
Nonstick pans, though most of the harm is from manufacture, not end-use
Yeah, huge amount of harm to the people around the manufacturing plants.
And some amount of eating extremely inert molecules to the people buying them.
Two separate things, the first worse than the second, but still.
Its used as the nonstick coating
It’s* used as
PTFE, aka Teflon.
Fucking teflon lobbying wins wtf
Stoneware ftw. Couldn’t pay me to go back to Teflon.
Cast iron FTW. Seasoning makes it non-stick, and it’s so much easier to clean compared to other cookware, not to mention it holds a fuckton of heat to give everything a nice sear, and I can put it in the oven.
I’ve never used stone pans, though, so IDK how they compare.
Ah, yep. All my camping gear is cast iron (except the compact stuff for hiking/light camps.
Honestly, the most satisfying part is reseasoning. “Yeeeeah. Get in there you deliciousness. So long as we got each other, you don’t ever have to worry about rust. Now let me shove this lamb shank in you and drop hot coals on your lid. I’ll see you in three hours for cleanup and some more oiling.”
Do tell. Stoneware as a brand name, or material?
Dunno if it’s what they are talking about, but I bought a set of the GraniteStone brand and fell in love. So much so that I bought a complete second set and a giant frying pan, lol
I’ll bet that is a brand of PFA
Probably not, I’m guessing it’s a ceramic coating similar to GreenPan (https://www.greenpan.us/pages/faqs-is-greenpan-cookware-healthy-to-use)
Note: I admittedly do not know enough about ceramic coatings to be able to say if they’re any better, but generally speaking they’re typically free from PFAS/PFOA/plastics
The secret of these coatings, which is deeply buried and requires some research, is their “sol-gel” structure.
Basically they are like a sintered bronze “oilite” bushing, where oil is stored in the pores between the bronze to lubricate the surface.
In this case the oil is silicone oil, and while it performs amazingly and is totally inert and harmless it sets a lifespan for the pan. Once the oil is depleted, the pan is worthless.
I’ve gone back almost entirely to cast iron and stainless steel, though I do have one Greenpan that I save for scrambled eggs and similar.
In this case the oil is silicone oil, and while it performs amazingly and is totally inert and harmless it sets a lifespan for the pan. Once the oil is depleted, the pan is worthless.
Could you not re-oil the pan like you do with steel and iron pans?
Ceramic is just a buzzword these days. Look at ceramic coating on cars, as on example.
Actual truly ceramic coatings are leagues better than teflon. They just nonstick a little worse and get stickier with abuse, instead of flaking off
Doubt the manufacturer’s website is trustworthy
“Squishy” claims like “healthy” or “better” are always iffy, but objective testable claims like PFAS-free are generally pretty trustworthy, as they can be easily disproven and open the company up to significant liability.
Sure they could be leaving out a million bad things that ARE in it, but the person I was replying to was specifically taking about PFAS, which are generally not found in ceramic nonstick coatings.
Granite and ceramics. Can’t go back. Cook an omelette in a stone pan and your mind will be blown . Super even heat, obviously very tough (yeeeeeears of life), and that egg will slide onto your plate without leaving a trace. Teflon and steel feels like those things humans do where we invent something despite the real solution having always been there all along.
I’m more of an enameled cast iron enjoyer myself
I own some enameled iron but find it’s only good for things like spaghetti sauce that attack exposed iron, and deglaze stuck material on their own.
Otherwise everything sticks to it terribly compared to regular seasoned iron.
Do you have a trick to avoid this? I’ve tried all manner of oils as well as lethecin spray, nothing seems to work for me.
Eh, at least this will reduce the amounts of PFAS being produced. I mean, teflon pans at least actually have a useful purpose, rather than things like PFAS coated burger wrappers.
Barely useful. Stainless steel and cast iron can achieve an almost equal non-stick effect, and handle much higher temperatures without toxic offgassing or stuff chipping off and ending up in the food.
Leaden flatware works too, but why use it when we have ceramic?
Teflon isn’t necessarily even easier to use than cast iron or stainless steel, I think the main issue there is that the education around how to use cookwear is very poor. It’s not just pop on the stove and go.
Carbon steel can, too. Plenty of non-nonstick options. And, amusingly enough, many of the highest quality of these items are produced in France.
I’d completely forgotten about carbon steel, but you’re right!
De Buyer Mineral B: Inexpensive and very very very decent.
I feel like ‘very very very decent’ is pretty close to ‘good’
Actually better than that, I’m also happy with those two pans I got off the Aldi centre isle for 10 bucks. The De Buyer seasons easier but the cheap ones are good enough if you know what you’re doing, only reason I’m not recommending bargain deals is because De Buyer has a known quality while the centre isle does not. Also the handles are quite simple (two loop ones), OTOH that means it fits even small ovens and keeps to itself on the stove, no handle wrangling needed. No good for flipping things, though, and have a kitchen towel at hand to not burn yourself.
They make such fantastic carbon steel pans. Reasonably priced, can take a good beating, and last a good long time. There’s a reason you see them in professional kitchens a lot (pay attention to the pans used on cooking shows or if you’re sitting in a restaurant where you can see the people cooking and you’ll recognize a certain “standard” De Buyer pan).
Yeah, I’ve never liked teflon either. The coating always seems to get scratched up no matter how careful you are with it (and some of those flakes end up in your food). But some people swear by it, so I could see them getting angry about a ban.
I’ve been auper happy with my ceramic pans the past couple years. Seems like nothing stocks to those bad boys
A dear friend of mine keeps birds, and she exclusively uses ceramic cookware. She swears by it, and honestly I get it.
Are the birds she keeps relevant to the ceramic pan discussion?
Yes! Teflon offgasses when heated up, and birds have extremely sensitive lungs. They die really fast from the gases.
You know the expression “canary in the coal mine”, right? It’s because caged canaries were used to detect methane or carbon monoxide. If the canary died, it’s time to get the hell outta there.
This is a problem with self-cleaning ovens as well. So if you keep birds, avoid non-stick and don’t use the self-cleaning function of the oven unless your bird is out of the house and in a well-ventilated spot because it’s quite likely to kill it.
Ceramic is basically fancy textured enamel. They do gunk up after a while, just clean with oxygen bleach.
I use all those pans and love them but I have never gotten them to be remotely non stick for low heat cooking. They’re great at searing, and you should never sear in a non stick, but for low heat cooking I haven’t found anything that remotely comes close to Teflon.
That’s fair, I just kind of put up with the fact that they don’t.
Almost as good and much bigger pain to use? Yeah, great deal lol
It really isn’t that big a pain if you know how to use them. Carbon steel is also a fantastic option.
if you know how to use them
Right
You really think it’s that hard for somebody to learn to scrub something with salt instead of soap, or to let a pan heat up before you put stuff in it? You must hang around some dumb fucking people.
You’re ironically perpetuating a myth that cast iron needs special care. You can clean cast iron with soap just like anything else. You just have to make sure it isn’t wet for extended periods of time
IIRC there’s a specific kind of soap that strips the seasoning off cast iron pans, but idk, if they still make them.
I was trying to keep it brief. It doesn’t usually need the special care, but it’s still easy.
Yeah
Cast iron: cook a load of bacon bacon before you try making tomato sauce and don’t put it in a dishwasher. Trying not to scratch Teflon is way more of a pain.
We just have plastic and wood utensils for cooking. I guess it would be a pain if you had metal ones
I just would probably avoid a tomato sauce in cast iron, high carbon steel, or aluminum pans. That’s what stainless is for.
It’s fine if you’re quick about it, or if you’re willing to re-do the patina. That is, there’s a huge difference in stripping between frying up some cut-up tomatoes a minute before you dump noodles into the pan, and reducing a tomato sauce.
Yes, any positive change is good.
Its just that economy/corporations are politically too powerful to make changes at speed we actually can (phase out PFAS). So the process is slower. And people die for profits of some, not to mention accumulation of that nasty stuff in various natural habitats.
Stainless steel cookware is cheap, easy to clean, and extremely durable. Nonstick pans are for people who don’t know shit.
It’s not planned obsolescence but something remarkably similar. They can be made for cheaper, go to shit eventually, then they wind up in a landfill while the consumer buys yet another. All wrapped up in slick marketing.
A proper stainless steel frying pan here costs about 100€+, more than a similar sized carbon steel or cast iron would cost
That’s crazy, depending on what you mean by “proper”. However I lucked out getting a full set of nice five ply stainless at a closeout for under $200
I also got a couple cast iron skillets on sale.
Overall, I spent less getting a full set of stainless plus 3 cast iron skillets, than I did on my previous set of non-stick about ten years ago, and these should last much longer. Is it too early to say this is my last set of cookware?
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Love being able to use steel wool on my wok without worry
Stainless + cast iron is all you need.
I’d add carbon steel pans as well. They’re the good tradeoff between stainless and cast iron.
I like cast iron mainly for baking (Dutch oven, etc) and carbon steel for pans.
Yeah, I do that too. Cast iron is amazing for stuff like that.
It was on Kickstarter which makes me a bit nervous, but I found a set of carbon steel clad pans from a new company called Strata Cookware. They’re the weight of something like an All-Clad but with a carbon steel top sheet. Pretty excited to try them out.
Cast iron doesn’t like dishwashers though
You’re not wrong, but it only takes 30-60 seconds to clean by hand. Scrub with chainmail and water then a light wash with a non-lye soap like dawn to remove excess oils. The soap isn’t even necessary if you use really hot water then wipe it clean with a rag.
True but needing all kinds of special treatment and equipment just for one pan type is a pain
Once your pan is seasoned it takes so little care. Just give it a fast hand wash like any non stick pan. Dish soaps used to be bad but these days they’re gentle enough to not be a problem.
To me, what is a pain is having to buy a pan every couple years. Or getting a new non stick pan and having roommates use metal on it when I specifically said not to.
The durability of cast iron makes it less fuss, imo.
It doesn’t need any special treatment. I season my cast iron pans no more than a few times a year, and usually only because I did something dumb like making tomato sauce in it instead of using the stainless steel pan. There is a minimum skill level, but the bar isn’t high at all.
They’re not really easy to clean, but I’m sure I’m also “cooking wrong”. With that said I only ever use cast iron so I don’t really care
hot water and steel wool make quick work of any tough cleaning. You gotta go harder than a scrubby if you made pot stickers.
The dishwasher takes care of 99% of my steel pans cleaning with no trouble though.
Oh you put them in the dishwasher? I guess I didn’t think of that
as someone who’d worked in the restaurant industry i second this.
I use Carbon Arch btw
Stainless Steel Debian is good enough for me.
Hey as long as it isn’t Teflon Windows 👍
Copper Tin Void nodding in agreement in the distance wearing a fancy tuxedo
This seems pretty stupid, just use carbon steel or cast iron: They both work great and don’t poison everyone!
Both of these do require more maintenance and patience than nonstick, which will inevitably make some people upset
I don’t fully agree with this, I’ve had nonstick pans in the past, and I had to baby the shit out of them to make sure they didn’t scratch, and they can only really be used in certain applications (never in the oven, don’t preheat, etc.)
I tossed my cast iron pan into a 800 degree pizza oven the other day and did not worry about anything. I beat the crap out of it with metal utensils, that are sturdier and better than their plastic counterparts, and it comes out smiling.
Yes I do have to hand wash it, but even that is easier because I can scrape any stuck on food off with a metal spatula or chainmail scrubber. If that’s a deal breaker, just go stainless and move on.
100% but many people don’t care about this stuff at all. They will happily toss their nonstick pan in the dishwasher, ruining it, and then buy a new one a year or two later when it doesn’t work properly anymore, or just suffer with it and conclude that they are bad at cooking. When you try to discuss seasoning, hand washing, and the intricacies of frying pan materials, their eyes immediately glaze over. Nonstick pans have the advantage of just working when you get a new one, and that is really appealing to someone with low cooking knowledge or interest.
I feel like marketing did a number on us.
These things are branded as ‘non-stick’ like steel is ‘do-stick’? And people just accepted that?
‘More maintenance’ than going to the store to buy new cookware every 6 months?
And I don’t really maintain my steel cookware, aside from putting it in & out of the dishwasher.
Only if you are putting the nonstick into the dishwashee.
Cast iron and to a lesser extent carbon steel require special considerations for seasoning, none of them are dishwasher safe. Stainless steel doesn’t really need seasoning but is significantly easier to get high protein food stuck on than PTFE
Getting things stuck is the point of stainless steel, things getting stuck means more goodness in the sauce you create by deglazing it.
Unless you’re cooking eggs. Getting your eggs horribly stuck to a stainless steel pan is a total nightmare!
For meats yes, for everything else no.
I actually googled Tefal after reading just the title to check if they arena French company… God i hate lobying
If I was French I’d probably demonstrate against the lobby groups and the government decision right now.
I mean, it’s almost Monday again, have to find a reason to get a long weekend no?
I love that tefal stuff ngl.
Hon hon hon hon
