Replace your plastic utensils and delicate nonstick cookware with metal spatulas, wooden spoons and cast iron pans. Problem solved!
> wooden spoons
I suffer from a kind of tactile aversion where I can't stand the sensation of drying a wet wooden spoon (or any wet wooden object) with a towel. Curious if anyone else has this.
Yes, and I also have an aversion to cotton swabs and cotton balls. Just thinking about the sensation makes my skin crawl.
Wow thought I was the only one my entire life. I can give lots of very weird and specific examples, but yes; N=2.
Yes. I can't stand holding anything that's made of wood with that rough, dry texture like cheap kitchen spoons. Also I've never been able to stand Popsicle type treats due to the wooden stick.
Not really but I have an aversion to drying anything with a towel.
That's why I have a dish washer, so I don't need to do those things manually. And yes I throw all my wooden cooking utensils into the dish washer and let them dry in there with all the heat it uses for that. I also leave things in the dishwasher until the heat has dissipated from all objects, which gets rid of most of the leftover dampness except for a few things including wooden utensils. I then place wooden utensils on a drying rack. Next day they go back in the cupboard.
And yes I know. You're not supposed to put them in there. I've been doing that for 10 years with the same wooden utensils now and they're all fine. Some have slightly warped handles where I assume the wood is taking back it's natural shape. Most are completely fine.
Yes wooden utensils are a huge sensory issue for me. I dislike using wooden cutting boards for similar reasons.
Just ensure that your specific cast iron or stainless steel does not contain any heavy metals.
Do you have evidence to suggest they do contain heavy metals?
Seems like some brands do have potential issues:
https://www.consumer.org.hk/en/press-release/p-541-cast-iron...
Yep, and glass containers for storing.
Besides glass, steel containers are fine too for storing dry items.
The article also cites plastic takeout trays as a problem though, which is harder to avoid unless you're willing to simply never order takeout from a large percentage of restaurants.
Fine by me. I can count the amount of times I ordered takeout from a restaurant on one hand. This does not include Pizza delivery like for parties or something but those come in cardboard boxes.
With plastic coatings, unfortunately.
Judging by how soaked our local pizza place's boxes get after just a little while I hope we're safe (as in it's really just corrugated cardboard) :)
This is really easy to avoid; cooking and eating at home is much cheaper and does not really take any more time unless you want to make something special.
You can't, or rather shouldn't generally, cook acidic foods in cast iron pans. Plus cast iron is really poor to use for many types of cooking since they don't react to changes in heat. Saying that it's good to have one around for occasional things. I like enameled cast iron dutch ovens, etc.
Carbon steel pans / stainless steel pans are also an option. Switched to carbon steel a couple years ago and haven’t looked back. Sometimes it’s a little more difficult, but once you get the technique down it’s as easy as non stick.
It’s also cool to know the pan will work for decades to come. Non stick pans inevitable start breaking down and just become toxic trash.
If you're not averse to high prices, copper pans are available too. Though a full set seems like it'd set you back $5000 or more. I've got a few from estate sales and other places for just a couple bucks, but there's only like 3 or 4 places in the United States to get them retinned, and they all want $120+ per pan (and that's with shipping it twice where they could get stolen, lost, or crushed).
Half-tempted to try to do it myself. What's a few ounces of tin cost? The fiberglass glove's not that expensive. Afraid of screwing it up somehow though.
This is a disaster in the making. Expect copper toxicity if cooking in copper. It happens more often than you think.
I can't tell if you're ignorant or trolling. They're not commonly sold, because poor people have to make due with $10 teflon pans (you know, the "forever chemicals") at Dollar General.
https://mauviel-usa.com/collections/copper-sets
The 12 piece set is $4200. You were probably too poor growing up to ever learn anything about this is my guess. But to reduce your anxiety, I'll point out that the cooking surface is tinned.
You have evidently not read the case reports of copper toxicity from cooking utensils resulting in irreversible organ damage.
Even if the internal surface is tin, it will easily thin out when on the stovetop, resulting in the food coming in contact with copper, leaking much copper into the food. Tin is also not okay with acidic foods.
In short, it is not worth even $42. If you're making a museum at home with your utensils, you're solving no one's problem, not even your own.
We use our cast iron pans for close to 100% of our ("frying pan") cooking, I'd say it works great.
It's often difficult to find metal utensils. Even when you can, they often have plastic handles... that sort-of-greasy, brightly colored plastics where the Chinese factory that made them used every plasticizer known to man. If you're lucky, wooden handles are available, but you see less of those every year. Not just Walmart/Target, but all the big box stores, even places you'd expect to be more upscale.
Searched for 2 or 3 years for a can-opener that wouldn't fall apart in a few months, finally found one. Nice big crank handle... but plastic knob on it. I don't think this can be solved by shopping at some hoity-toity NYC department store if only because anyone shopping at those places probably doesn't eat out of cans much.
Also, many of the foods one could have bought in glass jars just 10 or 15 years ago are now exclusively plastic. We switched to some regional off-brand on mayonnaise a few years ago because it was still in a glass jar, but even they eventually started selling it in plastic. Same with all the other condiments. Produce used to be in the egg-carton cardboard... I remember strawberries being sold that way as a kid. Or in little cheaply-woven baskets of some sort. I haven't seen that stuff since the 1980s. Deli meats used to be wrapped in butcher's paper, but sometime in the 1990s was put into plastic bags. Ice cream wasn't always sold in cardboard tubs (I remember even as a kid that the cheapest stuff was in plastic and I'm not sure why that is), but now even the premium brans have some plastic in contact with the product.
I highly recommend trying a restaurant supply store, like Chef's Toys. Most of them don't require a business license to go to (the ones that do typically sell food items). They sell primarily to commercial kitchens and restaurants, and often have a wide selection of "bare bones" cookware at various levels of quality to meet your budget. A lot of my kitchen items are from there — stainless bowls, a big stock pot, metal + wood cooking utensils, some knives, heavy-duty whisk, some glassware, my one non-stick pan, dry food bins, etc. The stuff lasts forever, and you can almost always get an exact replacement if you need it.
Another suggestion is to try is IKEA. They tend to have minimalistic kitchen stuff at very reasonable prices. My basic cooking utensil set (spoon, ladle, spatula, etc) is from there and if I remember right, cost around $10. Had it for years. Great for glassware too.
Sounds like a potential YouTube channel of someone buying what you would consider an otherwise acceptable product except for the plastic and then replacing them with DIY wooden replacements. Don't forget to smash that...ick
>It's often difficult to find metal utensils. Even when you can, they often have plastic handles
Restaurant supply store
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hmm, but my experience is better when it’s enabled.
I usually enable reader view when I see these popups, which usually works to get around them (including in this case).
this helps https://archive.li/kebfx
The ads on this site are horrendous. At one point I had a video ad pop up that I could not close and I had to refresh the page.
what ads? I don't see a single ad there. Are you using chrome by any chance? Cause I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and had no problem browsing the site without seeing a single ad.
Why is this comment downvoted? I also saw no ads, using Firefox Mobile with uBlock Origin and NextDNS.
because the entire point of the original comment was about the site's request to disable the blocker. you can go on an evangelical tour singing hallelujahs about ad blockers all you want, but when you do it in response to someone commenting specifically about the site's request to disable the blocker you sound like you just don't pay attention to the discussion and just run in screaming Leeroy Jenkins
uBO is blocking all the ads without such a message for me
I am starting to wonder if it is worth it to try to avoid cancer at this point. Outside the most obvious risks like tobacco...
There comes a point where the cumulative time needed to avoid the carcinogen exceeds the expected increase in lifespan
Also the enjoyment. Which I enjoy more for example cured meats for rest of my life, or the extension of that life without them...
It’s definitely worth advocating for regulation so consumers don’t need to worry about it on a case by case basis.
with cheap lab-grown diamonds on the horizon, how soon until i can replace/coat everything that comes into contact with me in pure diamond?
personally think diamond-tipped chopsticks to be the end-game utensil
not just coated with small diamonds on the tip: an actual huge single diamond on the end of each stick
Diamonds don't seem compatible with teeth and the digestive tract. I wouldn't use that if it was free.
Well, at least your teeth could be diamonds.
Diamond tipped? Just make the whole chopstick out of diamond. One long diamond. "The hardest chopsticks you'll ever use"
Sadly, diamond is pretty brittle :(
I've never used one of those compostable forks made from potatoes without it snapping in half or leaving a broken tine in my mouth, yet they still seem to sell. Make the diamond chopsticks single use and they'll sell like hotcakes!
What are you doing with your chopsticks?
the stainless steel utensils at ikea are quite reasonably priced and last for decades
> ...black-colored plastic... might contain potentially cancerous chemicals due to slip-ups in recycling practices
Tl;dr cheap plastic is cheap and contains cancer
This is why I store everything in glass or metal and mostly use metal, silicone, or sometimes wooden utensils, especially when in contact with heat. I specifically attempt to minimize waste plastic and while I reuse the bromine-containing black plastics, I don’t store anything acidic or hot in them, mostly dry goods. However, if even contact with them can lead to exposure (as this article suggests) then I may start storing them away rather than reuse them or recycle them. If I can’t reduce the initial supply, I can at least reduce the recycled supply.
Something I don’t understand is why if silicone is also an oil derived product, does it not leach chemicals like other petrochemical polymers?
It does. Silicone is not as inert as people keep saying it is.
Silicone can also be divided into two types based on curing process used.
The cheapest process is peroxide-cured. This creates dichlorobenzene and PCBs byproducts which can leach into your food/etc. The more expensive process is platinum-cured, which is cleaner and does not have the same byproduct risk. Some makers are transparent about using platinum-cured silicone. Hard to find though
The short answer is that it does leach chemicals - but at much higher temperatures and longer exposure times compared to plastic. It’s just much more chemically stable, but to your question, everything breaks down at some point.
> Tl;dr cheap plastic is cheap and contains cancer
Only to the State of California, or to anyone?
[flagged]
This is about flame retardants, some of which are outright supposed to be banned. They're not pleasant compounds
Just glancing around my room, black plastics are in: All my monitors, all of my computer cases, a pair of speakers, my headphones, my microphone, all my mice, all my keyboards, my phone, my tablet, my laptop, my router, all my USB hubs, a USB audio DAC, a small tabletop shelf, my emergency flashlight, remote control for my room heater, my circulator fan on the floor, innumerable power bricks and wall warts...
Black plastic is known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
This is literally worthless junkformation to me.
Victorian era London: "Just inhaling the air I can taste all sorts of particulate that people say is 'bad for you.' Knowing that it's bad is literally worthless junkformation."
While you are relatively powerless to prevent exposure to these compounds, you actually can advocate for stronger controls on them at the societal level. Not sure if you've noticed but we do indeed have a fertility crisis, and there's good reason to suspect compounds like these and the fatalistic Laissez-Faire attitude toward them hold a substantial amount of the blame.
Unless of course the leap you're really making is from "this fact is inconvenient" to "this fact is therefore false."
This is why people stopped putting Arsenic in expensive wallpaper. But I guess people would have considered that worthless junk information in Victorian times too
In Victorian London most of the bakers also adulterated their flour to make cheaper, whiter bread. (Bread was the main staple food, consumed in large quantities by most people.) Adulterants included plaster of Paris, bean flour, chalk, ground-up bone, and in particular alum, which caused all sorts of health problems.
I've always been surprised they don't require door and window manufactures to put warnings on them stating that opening them exposes you to cancer rays.
What a shitty website, completely unusable for me if it weren’t for reader mode. I sometimes wonder how people can stand this and even think it would be a good idea to share such websites (regardless of the actual content)
uBO worked fine for me on the site.
I guess you don't have uBlock Origin