How your cookware affects your health

I wouldn’t have wanted to have Le Creuset it weren’t it for the health factor.

Cast iron is hard and heavy. It requires getting used to, it’s nothing like any other skillet or saucepan you will ever use. Kailangan mong hanapin ang kiliti, you may ruin it if the temperature is too high, you may have unpleasantly cooked food if its too low or scorch it if its too high again. It’s heavy, as in heavy. Think barbels the smelly black discs you see in old gyms and you’ll have a pretty good idea how heavy it can get. It’s not for the weak-at-heart and the weak-at-arms.

But…. it is the healthiest so far. It only leaches iron into our food, and we know how much we need that ladies. The worst is we have to select multi-vitamins without iron, lest we get too much of it when we cook with these babies.

As for the rest, here is the rundown of what I found out.

Aluminum the cheapest (I believe) leaches into our food and is a suspected cause of Alzheimers.

Teflon (the easiest) is also not as safe as we want to believe especially when its scratched, and we all know how easy that is! It releases toxins into our food that is also suspected to cause cancer. The thing is, cancer is on the rise in the last decade or so and it leaves one to deduce that the cause is really in our environment, the food that we eat, the things that we use and surrounded with, so I try to keep these suspects to a minimum and as much as I can control it.

Next is, Stainless Steel, relatively safe, if ever it just releases Nickel which at worst is an allergen, well of course me and my kids are allergic, so that leaves that out as well.

Other less expensive options are Ceramic and Glass cookware, but you still have to be careful with the manufacturer because less reliable ones may contain lead, and of course we do not want that. I would like to believe Corelle and Visions and Pyrex are my best bets, I haven’t found any adverse studies on these so far. Well, I actually do use my Corelle cookware on my stovetop, one thing though, for those of you who does and dared try it out, you know how scorched it gets when you saute in it.

Cooking with cast iron also saves on gas. I cook our rice in it and its done in 15 minutes! It was a big transition though from the rice cooker, which was a no brainer. With cast iron, you would have to gauge it when its ready and turn off the heat just before its really cooked otherwise its “tutong” (sorry the English word doesn’t sound as descriptive to me). It’s because it retains heat so well that its still cooking even after you turn off the heat.

Other plus factors for choosing Le Creuset and Corelle is that it goes from stove, to table, to ref and even freezer! For those mamas without help, like me, that is just sooo great! Less things to wash (did I say I was allergic… I am allergic to dishwashing and laundry soap!)

But before you get any ideas, I would like to say that I can hardly afford to go all Le Creuset so my daily cookware revolves around several brands to keep a healthy balance on our bodies and pockets. Its Le Creuset, Rachel Ray, Lodge for cast iron, and Corelle and Pyrex. I’m still trying to ease out my teflon stockpot and skillet. But as soon as I get the hang of using my cast iron skillet… they are out!