Teflon-coated cookware pervades our domestic lives and our kitchen cupboards with many people in the dark over the health and environmental risks associated with the product.
Teflon, a material invented by accident in the post-WWII era, was once lauded in the kitchen convenience-obsessed 20th century for its easy-to-clean, fuss-free properties. The active ingredient in Teflon is PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid. This chemical is used to make fluoropolymer compounds, which, other than Teflon, are used in oil and water-repellent coatings on surfaces such as paper and carpet.
“Teflon coating exudes toxic substances when you cook. So you’re pretty much poisoning yourself using it,” health coach Catherine* explains. “There are toxins in those coatings and they’re going to be infused into your foods.”
Sounds lethal, right? So why are we using it on our cookware?
The Dupont website proudly boasts, “We didn’t just invent the non-stick cookware category; we’re constantly perfecting it” and that “Cookware made with DuPont™ Teflon® non-stick coating systems is safe for both consumer and commercial use at normal cooking temperatures, as affirmed by fifty years of consumer use along with laboratory testing and published peer reviewed research.”
Marketing is a beautiful thing, and clever wording allows big business to say just about anything it wants if they put the right spin on it. The fact is, around the 200 degrees mark, Teflon-coated cookware is releasing a plethora of chemicals that are harmful and can cause back ache, headaches and fever, to name a few.
I don’t know about you, but when partaking in domestic bliss it is imperative that I have a non-stick frying pan on hand. So what is the solution?
It might be time to invest in some Ecolon-coated cookware, such as Neoflam, Catherine suggests. Ecolon is a ceramic coating that can be heated to temperatures almost twice as high as that of Teflon.
“Completely non-toxic, there’s no plastic stuff and there’s no chemicals in Neoflam cookware,” Catherine says. “It’s like a ceramic dish which you can heat. There’s no toxins coming out of it. It’s a harder coating than Teflon as well so it’s a bit more scratch resistant too.”
Neoflam cookware is better for the environment and better for your health from both a toxicity perspective, and also a fat content perspective as you don’t have to use much oil, if any, in your cooking. Catherine swears by it.
“You don’t have to use any oil, and you can just fry an egg without adding any fat to it. It’s so easy to clean, nothing sticks – it adds a bit of colour, and I’ve had my Neoflam frypan for two years – I could take it back into the shop and you wouldn’t know it had been used.”
For more information on Neoflam cookware and its benefits, visit neoflam.com.au.
*Health coach asked not to be named out of respect to her employer.