Healthy Cookware -- by Rebecca Wood

[Guest guest]

Healthy Cookware — by Rebecca Wood

 

Avoid adding toxins to your foods. Here are guidelines for choosing—and

using—healthy cookware. Quality cookware helps you maintain good health and, in

some cases, even enhances flavor. It's also useful to know the foods that most

quickly react to plastic storage containers and to aluminum and cast-iron

cookware.

 

 

 

Featured Recipe:

White Bean and Herb Dip

 

Q: What's the healthiest cookware to use? — Shelly Ann, Lucas, Texas

 

A: Imagine me offering you two steaming cups of tea. One hand holds a Styrofoam

cup and the other a ceramic mug. Without even thinking, you automatically reach

for the mug.

One taste of hot tea in a Styrofoam cup and you know you're drinking more than

tea. Even though the cup looks stable, it's not. And have you noticed how dried

foods stored in plastic bags start to taste like plastic? It's because food ions

react with synthetic or metallic ions.

 

The poly-vinyl chloride (PVC) found in plastic wrap leaches into food according

to a Consumer Reports study in June 1998. People eating plastic wrapped cheese,

for example, could be ingesting high levels DEHA, a hormone disrupting toxin.

Please favor non-reactive containers and covers and do NOT use plastic wrap in a

microwave.

 

Fatty foods and acidic foods react more quickly than other foods. Therefore,

never store oils, vinegar, tomatoes or wine in flexible plastic containers

because these foods more quickly draw chemicals from plastic. (A heavier, inert

plastic container is, however, acceptable). And do not store food in plastic

containers that once contained chemicals.

 

Beyond Styrofoam and plastic, consider the reactivity of your various kitchen

tools and cookware. There's good reason why glass and ceramic beakers are used

in a chemistry lab where its critical that containers don't taint the

experiment.

 

Non-Reactive Cookware includes earthenware, ceramic, enamel and glass. Quality

enamel pots, such as Le Creuset and Chantal are actually a fused glass surface.

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.

 

Glass coffee pots and casserole dishes are non-reactive and affordable.

Lead-free earthenware and ceramic cookware emit a far-infrared heat, the most

effective and beneficial heat for fine cookery. They are found in some kitchen

supply shops or from your local potter.

 

Also, favor non-reactive kitchenware such as wooden spoons, bamboo steamers and

paddles and glass storage containers.

 

While anodized aluminum pots are not reactive, manufacturing them is toxic to

the environment, so I can't endorse them. In the anodizing process, the etch

reacts with aluminum and the resulting highly caustic outgas is vented into the

atmosphere. Neither do I recommend CorningWare or VisionWare because these

products contain synthetic polymers.

 

Reactive cookware includes stainless steel, aluminum, synthetically coated

cookware and plastic cookware. Heavy-gauge stainless or surgical steel is the

least reactive metal. Remove food from metal as soon as it is cooked to minimize

its metallic taste. Once stainless steel has been scratched through normal

scouring the leaching of metallic ions is more noticeable.

 

Cast iron pots are good for quick breads, pancakes and crepes and for sautéing

vegetables. Do not, however, cook soups, liquids or acid foods in cast iron as

these foods leach harsh-tasting iron from the pot. Keep in mind that acidic and

fatty foods in general react more quickly than other foods.

 

Cooking with aluminum or aluminum foil enriches your food with aluminum to the

detriment of your health. Avoid Teflon and all other synthetic coated cookware.

They contain polymers that react with and/or chip off into your food. When dry

heated, these polymers emit fumes that are lethal to parakeets. Parakeets or

not, who needs noxious fumes flooding the kitchen.

 

The accompanying recipe is for a creamy bean-herb dip.

 

 

 

May you be well nourished.

http://www.rwood.com/Questions/Healthy_Cookware.htm

_________________

 

JoAnn Guest

mrsjoguest

DietaryTipsForHBP

http://www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The complete " Whole Body " Health line consists of the " AIM GARDEN TRIO "

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" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

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We have made every effort to ensure that the information included in these pages

is accurate. However, we make no guarantees nor can we assume any responsibility

for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, product, or

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[Guest guest]

I'm worried about all the Visions cookware I've been using, but I want to

check on the warnings I've read here about Thallium and synthetic polymers

that are supposedly released by this cookware. I have tried to research

this question on Google and come up with absolutely nothing. I'd very much

like to have more than one source before I throw away all my expensive

cookware! Anyone with ideas on how to do this research?

 

Claire

[Guest guest]

Maybe I can find out what I need to know by asking a different question:

when Rebecca Wood states . . .

 

" While anodized aluminum pots are not reactive, manufacturing them is toxic

to the environment, so I can't endorse them. In the anodizing process, the

etch reacts with aluminum and the resulting highly caustic outgas is vented

into the atmosphere. Neither do I recommend CorningWare or VisionWare

because these products contain synthetic polymers. "

 

is she comparing the last two products to the anodized aluminum in that the

production process is toxic to the environment--but not the cooking process,

or are the polymers used in the production released into food by cooking?

 

It's hard for me to think of the Vision Ware and reactive, since an empty

pot can sit on an electric ring set to high for a good half hour without

showing any damage at all and creating only the slightest whiff of burning.

 

Claire