How rapid the fall has been. Everyone loved Teflon at one time. In the 70s when DuPont first thought of it, it seems like such a great idea - a kind of frying pan that was so smooth that you didn't even need much fat to keep things from sticking to the surface and burning.
It would help people keep unhealthy fat out of their food, it was thought. People began to notice soon enough that when it came to this kind of cookware, nonstick coatings didn’t last very long.
After six months of regular use, on most cookware, most nonstick coatings began to flake off or scratch off. It made people nervous to think that they could be ingesting this strange stuff. But still, nonstick pans were ridiculously inexpensive at $15 - $20; people just kept up a constant cycle of new cookware purchases while they sent the old stuff into the basement. But then, recently, there seem to be two new disturbing pieces of news that seem to deal quite a blow to confidence people have always placed in their nonstick cookware.
The first happens to be quite a serious discovery - Teflon, if heated to 680 degrees, can break down and release seriously a toxic gas called PFOA. DuPont and 3M, the makers of Teflon have faced class action lawsuits because of this. And then, there is the problem that if a person is exposed to gases of this class, his body begins to produce a great deal of dangerous LDL-cholesterol. Considering how cholesterol avoidance is the reason people choose to go nonstick in the first place, this does seriously call the wisdom of buying nonstick into question.
3M and DuPont have assured the world that they have moved away from using PFOA in the way they manufacture their nonstick materials. But people have lost their trust in what Teflon is able to do for them. If you are one among them, what are your alternatives?
The first thing you notice buying cookware that doesn't have any coating is that your costs rise almost immediately. When you slap a nonstick coating on a pan, even a cheap pan (one that would have hotspots without the coating), becomes quite usable. When it comes to cookware, nonstick-free pans have to be the expensive kind to be of any use.
Stainless steel happens to really allow food to burn and stick to it. So stainless steel has to be a bad idea when it comes to uncoated cookware. All-Clad pans have to do a reasonable job with cooking chicken and eggs with nothing more than a thin film of oil. Brown anything though, and you will certainly have a sticky situation on your hands. Le Creuset enameled cast iron pans can be so wonderful that you’ll wonder why people bother with Teflon at all. But the best that modern technology has to offer the nonstick enthusiast is the textured ceramic pan that costs a mere $30 for a model by a company such as Ozeri (they call it the Green Earth frying pan). Once you use this product, you’ll probably rush to dump your 3M stocks.
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