France votes to ban ‘forever chemicals,’ exempting frying pans
politico.eu
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.
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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.
I like french omelets and haven't once come close to being able to make one successfully on anything but a non stick pan. Even chefs like Jacques Pepin uses them for dishes like that, and a lot of french dishes are low heat, so I understand why they'd want pans that can perform well for that. Personally, I've had my non sticks for many years now and they're still in great condition because I take care of them. I don't overheat them, I only use silicone or wood on them, and I hand wash them (because dishwashers can't physically scrub, dishwasher detergents have abrasives in them to dislodge food from surfaces which will scratch up the pan and make it deteriorate. It's also why you don't put knives in the dishwasher.). Every time I've been over at someone's house with bad quality non stick pans and observed them cook, they've been doing everything wrong, metal utensils, high heat, dishwasher. Those things will destroy your pans immediately, and you're not going to know that unless you're already into cooking, and another part of the problem is that the people who will benefit from the pans the most, are also people who aren't good at cooking yet. Used correctly, they're still a very good tool to have in your arsenal for many dishes for even an experienced cook.
I do think it's a big problem that people use the pans incorrectly all the time, it's bad for the environment to not take care of the stuff you own and have to trash them early, but that's true in general. In the case of non stick pans it's extra bad because of the chemicals used in them and that they also will impact your health since the fumes that can be produced by using them wrong is dangerous, so maybe these pans need to come with instruction manuals, or maybe people are just too irresponsible for us to have nice things, but I personally really like them for a lot of specific dishes that they excel at, all dishes that require non stick at low heats.
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.
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.
Yes it's called soap. Soap is made by mixing a base with fat, and the end result will still be basic. Washing-up liquid isn't soap, though, it's SLS, pH-neutral.
Still it's plainly not necessary to use that on pans: First off, if you know what you're doing (first heat up, then add oil, then fry) things won't stick in the first place, if they do, deglazing will take it off, and if you're not deglazing with wine or such to get a sauce (for which stainless is the better option because you get more stick) some water will do.
My routine is: Shovel dish onto plate, take the pan to the sink, pour in some water, scrub a bit with a brush, at that point the pan is clean. Put back on the hot plate, add a drop of oil, spread it with some kitchen tissue. The residual heat will make the water evaporate and the oil prevents rusting, it's also going to be the source of new patina for the next heat-up cycle. The right amount of oil coating to apply is "try to get it all off with the tissue".
And if you think that's unhygienic may I remind you that the thing gets sterilised every single use: Heat up the pan past smoking point (you'll see the still existing oil coating get dull), add oil and immediately whatever you want to fry.
Oh and get yourself a stainless steel spatula. Practically impossible to find in the kitchen isle nowadays, have a look at the grill section. Plastic doesn't take heat well, wood tends to be annoyingly thick. I even sharpened mine so I can use it to cut stray too-big pieces in the pan easily.
So you are worried about soap affecting the seaosning on your cast iron, but are fine with stainless steel utensils stripping it all off? You wouldn't wash your plates and dishes with just hot water and some light scrubbing, so don't wash your pans that way. Modern dish soap wont do anything to harm your pans and even extend the longevity since they take off leftover food particles that house all sorts of microbes.
No I'm not worried. Stripping or weakening patina is a thing that should be avoided but occasionally happens. Taking care of the patina is a matter of convenience, comparable to cleaning your plates before they're crusty: Both situations can be fixed, by re-seasoning and heavy scrubbing respectively.
First off yes I do if there's no grease to get off, secondly plates and dishes don't get heat-sterilised on every use.
Dish soap is good against fat, it allows it to enter emulsion with water. It does nothing to starches which are already perfectly soluble in water, and preciously little to proteins which tend to have quite good solubility in water.
Not using soap has two principal reasons: a) it's unnecessary, boiling water already takes everything off but the grease and b) I'm going to add some oil afterwards anyway why take off all the grease? If I'm just a bit lucky I don't need that extra drop of oil at all what stays on the pan is sufficient.
Oh no! Do you have allergies? Other kinds of autoimmune disorders? I don't. You can bet your ass that I scrub everything that has touched raw meat thoroughly (short of the pan that gets sterilised by frying), but don't expect me to use soap on a plate with breadcrumbs and a spot of jam on it.
Microbes dont just make you sick by infections. They produce plenty of nasty toxins,most famously botulism, that make you ill, and only incineration is hot enough to make them safe. There is no extra effort to wash your plates and dishes with a little soap, and plenty of downsides not to.
Most famously clostridium botulinum is an anaerobic bacterium: It can't live in the presence of oxygen (though the spores are ludicrously hardy, yes). You should be more worried about your bottles of oil than your plates. Especially if you put chilli or basil or garlic or such in that oil, that's when you actually need to worry: Anerobic environment, food for the bacterium, also, source for the bacterium (if you're unlucky). That's why one shouldn't keep pesto Genoese around for too long, eat it before c. botulinum had time to produce non-negligible amounts of toxin, whether it happens to be in your pesto or not.
Don't pretend like you know what you're talking about that's some true-crime level of bug paranoia you have there.
Yeah, borax soap that no one uses anymore because it just destroys everything. Whatever soap you use to clean everything else is perfectly safe for a cast iron pan.
You wouldn't wash a spoon or a plate with just hot water, so don't wash your pans with only hot water either
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.
Exactly, this’ll limit the exposure to them in things you wouldn’t expect them to be on/in. You can avoid Teflon pans and go iron or steel but the amount of stuff coated in PFAS is ridiculous. Hell, even sofas, rugs, blinds, etc all sorts of stuff. And before anyone says “you don’t eat that stuff”, try telling my toddlers that! I bought a black milk frothing jug for my espresso machine. The black coating? Teflon. Not mentioned anywhere, not even marketed as non-stick.
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.