It’s been a real concern for long whether our cookware is safe for our food!
Food contamination with harmful components leached from the utensil is not a rumor. Rather it is a proven scenario by the experts.
However, stainless steel, as a cookware making materials, occupies the top place in the list. But we know being popular cannot be the guarantee of being safe. So let us investigate whether our safest stainless cookware is really safe for our health or not.
Facts that reveal your cookware safe or unsafe:
Before jumping into the main discussion, it is important to know the facts that help us better understand it.
There are some facts to take into account to know what really makes cookware alarming for health.
Chemical Components:
To increase the lifetime of the cookware, most manufacturers produce coated or bonded items.
To form an alloy; there need more than one component. For instant, aluminum alloy refers to an ionic bond between aluminum and another material.
The concern arises if the alloy includes any harmful chemical components like chromium, nickel, etc.
Reactiveness:
Not all cookwares react equally once they come to the heating source.
Cookwares’ reactiveness depends on their material quality. If the material quality is not good, the cookwares might react and leach contents even in the low heat.
Therefore, sensitivity and reactiveness play a role here, and you need to be cautious regarding this.
Poor Maintenance:
No matter how good the quality is, unexpected might happen if you fail to maintain the cookware properly.
Besides chemical components, germs and bacteria can cause severe diseases.
So leaving the utensils unwashed and cooking food in stale cookware also harmful for your health.
Heat Management:
Some cookware reacts slowly and hardly leach components. But due to inexpert heat management, they become threatening as well.
If you cook in high heat for so long, and the temperature exceeds the pots’ reaction limit, they may start leaching components.
Similarly, if you cook in low heat for so long, the same might happen as well. Therefore failing to maintain proper heat can also cause health issues.
Cooking in Stainless Steel is Good for Health?
Now we know the potential factors responsible for making the cookwares threatening for health. Let’s see whether stainless steel made cookwares are free from all these or not.
Nonreactive Behavior:
Most of the stainless steel made cookwares are nonreactive even in the high heat. Leaching and releasing harmful components is a very rare case when it comes to stainless steel cookware.
Their nonreactive behavior ensures your health safety by releasing food fresh and toxic-free.
Components:
High-quality stainless steel contains pure steel and comes without alloy and bonds.
But a standard quality stainless steel cookware may contain chromium and nickel at a safe ratio.
Experts say 16% chromium in stainless steel alloy is not alarming, and it will be better if there is a total absence of nickel.
Not all stainless steel cookware is indeed safe for health but if you know what to avoid and what to take, you are completely safe with this material.
Easy Maintenance:
As said earlier stale utensils are the comfortable habitation for germ and bacteria. So regular cleaning matters.
But cleaning utensils after every meal is really a hassle. From that point, stainless steel can give you relief providing easy cleaning.
Most of the stainless steel cookware sets come with a non-stick cooking surface. Therefore the chance of being oily and greasy is very little here.
Apart from this, soft scrub with liquid and detergent on the burn spot is enough to vanish it if it is on the stainless steel cookware.
So, easy cleaning and maintenance reduce the chance of being stale, and you are free from any bacterial diseases here.
Final Thoughts
Stainless steel made cookwares have been dominating the market for so long.
To keep the flavor intact for so long, gaining the trust of the consumers is obvious. After all, we take food to keep our health safe and sound.
Therefore, using health risk, free utensils for cooking food represents one’s sensible lifestyle. And it can be said that stainless steel made cookwares have been the part of this lifestyles for so long.