Latest / Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker / Cookware’s Forever Chemical Reckoning: The Toxic War In Your Kitchen

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Cookware’s Forever Chemical Reckoning: The Toxic War In Your Kitchen · Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker

• 0:00
  Welcome to Nonsense Season 4, Episode 30, our big story.
• 0:03
  I'm Jeff Parker. I'm CJ Little.
• 0:04
  This time, we're looking at Cookware's forever chemical
• 0:07
  reckoning. Up next.
• 0:08
  I really don't want forever chemicals anywhere near my food.
• 0:11
  Is that Can we? Can we make that a?
• 0:13
  Fence, but you're getting them if you're using nonstick pants
• 0:15
  and that's the whole point of this episode.
• 0:16
  We're going to talk about nonstick pants.
• 0:18
  You have any nonstick? Pants.
• 0:18
  I plead the 5th. No English.
• 0:22
  OK. I literally texted my wife
• 0:24
  before we recorded and said we have to get rid of all our pans.
• 0:27
  I've had these pants for like 25 years because I'm, as you know,
• 0:31
  cheap and they have a lifetime warranty and about every five
• 0:34
  years I just swapped them out with more of the forever
• 0:36
  chemicals. So I've actually kept the
• 0:37
  forever. Chemicals going OK.
• 0:39
  The toxic marketing war in your kitchen?
• 0:41
  Let's go. I don't need any more wars in my
• 0:42
  kitchen. He got some trouble at home.
• 0:44
  I mean, you met my kids. Like there's always, they're
• 0:46
  always worrying about something. The golden age of effortless
• 1:04
  food release is officially over. For decades, the cookware
• 1:07
  industry wrote a profitable wave of polytetrafluoroethylene
• 1:11
  convenience. But a chemical reckoning has
• 1:13
  arrived. Driven by sweeping state bands
• 1:15
  and a tsunami of greenwash lawsuits, the billion dollar
• 1:18
  nonstick market is fracturing into a bitter civil war Legacy
• 1:21
  Manufacturing giants are scrambling to reformulate
• 1:23
  complex global supply chains, while upstart eco brands
• 1:27
  weaponized consumer anxiety to seize market share.
• 1:30
  As regulators demand total chemical transparency, The
• 1:33
  industry is discovering the hard way.
• 1:35
  Hiding behind clever nomenclature is no longer an
• 1:37
  option. The fight for your kitchen has
• 1:39
  turned toxic. This is probably a good time for
• 1:41
  me to discuss my response to the the what you called I believe
• 1:45
  the multibillion dollar non stick bitter civil war, which
• 1:49
  which I'm referring to as the Getty burger address.
• 1:52
  I feel like that's the best way to address it.
• 1:54
  No Should I did dinner 4 score and three pans ago?
• 1:57
  Let's say you're a chef. I am a chef.
• 1:59
  Let's say you're an omelet chef at a hotel omelet bar.
• 2:02
  I'm an omelet chef, OK, Whatever you want me to be.
• 2:04
  You've been to 100 of these things.
• 2:06
  Yes, They all use nonstick pans. Yes.
• 2:08
  No. Yes, they do.
• 2:10
  No. Yes, if they're if you're if
• 2:11
  they're using a nonstick pan, you should you should run.
• 2:14
  I hope they're not using a nonstick.
• 2:15
  Pan, I wish I had options. Here's the problem.
• 2:17
  Yeah, in most commercial kitchens you are not going to
• 2:20
  see nonstick pans for a variety of reasons.
• 2:22
  I think in omelette bars you will occasionally.
• 2:25
  The reason being they can't rotate their pans.
• 2:27
  I see. Them at The Four Seasons.
• 2:29
  I see them at the Ritz Carlton. I see them in Saint Regis.
• 2:31
  This is not Motel 6 where I'm I'm seeing Teflon pans.
• 2:34
  Ironically, the Motel 6 used to stainless steel, but exactly.
• 2:36
  Today, like I said, they've got lovely lockers, very nice.
• 2:41
  Motel 6 quite unexpected. It's actually an outlet for
• 2:44
  lockers that I know nobody ever really would have connected
• 2:46
  those dots, but that's how it worked.
• 2:47
  Omelets are interesting, and eggs especially.
• 2:49
  Because eggs are just little blobs of protein.
• 2:51
  They'll have to stick to everything, which they love to
• 2:53
  do. So you'll see that generally
• 2:55
  speaking in commercial kitchens though, you will not see
• 2:58
  nonstick. Pans.
• 2:59
  I'm not worried about that. I'm just worried about the
• 3:00
  omelet bar. That's my favorite thing in my
• 3:02
  life. Really nothing else that you
• 3:04
  care about. You're like, as long as the
• 3:05
  omelet bar is OK, I'm fine. As long as they cook the eggs
• 3:08
  well, do not give me overcooked eggs.
• 3:10
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Cook them properly.
• 3:12
  The hump on the curve of people who know how to make eggs is
• 3:15
  slid way to the left because most people cannot make eggs.
• 3:18
  They just, they just torch. Eggs.
• 3:20
  I do not want bits of rubber. Thank you.
• 3:22
  Yes. Not in my food, that is not That
• 3:24
  is, that is not good. But I would argue that eggs are
• 3:27
  probably one of the biggest reasons why we ended up with
• 3:31
  Teflon. Lasting, of course, yeah.
• 3:33
  Very sticky. Very sticky substance, but.
• 3:35
  That's not how it started, right?
• 3:36
  It didn't start with with eggs, or even with cookware at all,
• 3:39
  which is somewhat fascinating. All right, let me let me set the
• 3:41
  ground rules and then we'll get into how this all started that
• 3:43
  because that's exactly where I'm just ground rules.
• 3:45
  I got a bunch of questions for you.
• 3:46
  You have two minutes or under 2 minutes to answer each of them.
• 3:49
  Under 2 minutes holding a stopwatch.
• 3:51
  Are you ready? I feel seen.
• 3:52
  All right, let's. Go How did we get stuck in this
• 3:54
  Teflon mess to begin with? Where did they come from?
• 3:57
  So. It was an accident.
• 3:58
  Most great inventions are like the post it note an accident.
• 4:01
  Yes, and it goes back to the late 30s, right?
• 4:03
  There's a, there's a chemist at DuPont.
• 4:05
  So let's be clear, not organic. Always a chemist at DuPont.
• 4:08
  It's always a chemist at DuPont. That's where everything comes
• 4:10
  from. And he was trying to invent a
• 4:13
  non-toxic refrigerant gas. That was the goal.
• 4:17
  And he froze a cylinder of some of this gas overnight.
• 4:20
  And the next morning when he opened it, nothing came out.
• 4:22
  And yet the cylinder weighed the same.
• 4:24
  Yeah. So he's like, wait a minute,
• 4:26
  there was stuff in it. It didn't come out.
• 4:27
  It must still be in there somewhere.
• 4:29
  It's now lining the cylinder. And it was this weird slippery
• 4:32
  white powder and he was like, Oh well, what is this?
• 4:35
  I could have to start over. Nope, You just invented Teflon,
• 4:38
  buddy. Like this PTFE.
• 4:40
  It was what he invented. By the way, I did not know this.
• 4:43
  It was initially a state secret because during World War 2,
• 4:46
  scientists on the Manhattan Project needed a material that
• 4:49
  could withstand uranium hexafluoride, which is a super
• 4:52
  corrosive gas. So they they turned to Teflon,
• 4:55
  which ultimately made it a state secret for years.
• 4:58
  And it wasn't until the 50s when a French engineer who was using
• 5:02
  Teflon to keep his fishing gear from tangling his wife was like,
• 5:05
  oh, that'd be nice on the pan can.
• 5:07
  You get it on my. Pants, I need more forever
• 5:08
  chemicals in my life, is what she said.
• 5:10
  That was a direct quote, just in French.
• 5:11
  And then, of course, it blew up in the US when first lady Jackie
• 5:14
  Kennedy was photographed leaving Macy's holding AT Fall Pan.
• 5:17
  And that was in, like, 1961. Yeah.
• 5:19
  And then everybody had to have one, right?
• 5:21
  Just T fall became all the rage. It got to the point where they
• 5:23
  were like airlifting pans from France.
• 5:25
  T Fall is the creation of the guy who made the fishing yes
• 5:27
  tackle, who then created the first pan Yes, T Fall was his
• 5:30
  company. Yeah, and it's important, too,
• 5:32
  of Teflon and aluminum, which I find amusing.
• 5:34
  Yeah, people believe that NASA invented it.
• 5:35
  They didn't remember. This was invented long before
• 5:37
  NASA, decades before NASA even existed.
• 5:39
  They used it for years. We thought this stuff was made
• 5:42
  of absolute miracles, Unicorn blood, leprechaun tears.
• 5:46
  That's what we thought went into this.
• 5:47
  Sure, the joke always was if you can make if you have a Teflon
• 5:50
  pen and nothing sticks to it, how does the Teflon sticks to
• 5:52
  the pen? And of course, sadly, the answer
• 5:54
  is not particularly well, You get it in your food all the
• 5:57
  time. That that is actually the
• 5:58
  answer, yeah. The answer is you basically have
• 6:00
  to wheel it on there OK, like. Tell me why it's considered
• 6:03
  undesirable. Why is it that we do not want
• 6:05
  this forever chemical 'cause we do cool things with it?
• 6:08
  There's kind of yes, a lot of cool things happen from Teflon.
• 6:10
  Yes, we make medical devices out of Teflon.
• 6:13
  Yes, there's all sorts of catheters and all sorts of other
• 6:15
  things. Yes, it's inert.
• 6:16
  Your body doesn't react to it in any way, so your body won't
• 6:18
  reject it. Teflon has great uses.
• 6:20
  How come? In pans, yes, this is a problem.
• 6:22
  Why in cookware do we not want? Also great in door locks.
• 6:24
  PTFE is an excellent dry lubricant in door locks.
• 6:27
  Oh, that's so interesting. Lovely stuff.
• 6:28
  Wow. Yeah, you just don't want to eat
• 6:30
  it. Like most lubricants, you don't
• 6:31
  want to eat it. OK, Very few lubricants do we
• 6:33
  consider not just safety but delicious, and PTFE is not one
• 6:37
  of them. Although there's a special
• 6:38
  section if you go to the. Store it's behind where they
• 6:40
  have your edible lubricants behind the beaded curtain that's
• 6:42
  where all the good stuff is you're like oh coconut I'd like
• 6:45
  that is this a single serving for just me before we get into
• 6:47
  the safety profile which is which is really the big issue
• 6:50
  here from a a gastronomic perspective non stick pans are
• 6:54
  terrible they're just terrible you can't get anything to stick
• 6:57
  to the pan that's the whole point right yes so you can't
• 7:00
  form the fond which. Is that bits of food?
• 7:03
  Caramelize the brown bits, the stuff and like, if you're, if
• 7:06
  you're cooking a meat, you want this Malliard reaction.
• 7:09
  I'm mispronouncing that it's French.
• 7:11
  Who knows you want that to happen.
• 7:12
  It's very hard to get that because what you end up getting
• 7:14
  instead is this layer of steam and nothing sticks.
• 7:18
  So right, you get it's like it's not as bad as just microwaving
• 7:21
  something, but it's closer to microwave than to cooking in a
• 7:23
  pan. So that's not great.
• 7:24
  You can't use any high heat cause any high heat as as we'll
• 7:27
  chat about the PTFE vaporizes which is harmful to you, your
• 7:31
  pets and and your food. Owner, let me just say it will
• 7:34
  kill your bird faster than you can blink.
• 7:36
  I mean, this is Canary in the coal mine sort of thing.
• 7:38
  Yeah, which is terrible. And this actually has a an
• 7:40
  application in 3D printers. 3D printers use a form of PTFE tube
• 7:44
  they typically call a Boden tube.
• 7:45
  And those get very hot because they touch the hot end of the 3D
• 7:48
  printer. If you get those things too hot
• 7:49
  with a Boden tube, it'll just kill all the birds in your
• 7:51
  house, like, instantly. The other thing terrible this is
• 7:54
  this is still the case, but especially with cheap pans,
• 7:56
  cheap nonstick pans that have cheap coatings on them.
• 7:59
  They're usually very thin aluminum, and they do a terrible
• 8:01
  job holding heat. Just terrible, horrible job.
• 8:03
  So they're just not great as as that's not a function of the
• 8:06
  PTFE, it's a function of enabling A thinner pan because
• 8:09
  of the PTFE. But those are all great reasons
• 8:11
  to not have one. When you zoom in though, the
• 8:13
  safety profile is even worse because effectively what you're
• 8:17
  getting is microplastics for dinner.
• 8:18
  If you get a scratch or an abrasive sponge, you just get
• 8:21
  this release of microplastics and there was a study in 2022
• 8:25
  that showed a Teflon pan can release upwards of 9000
• 8:27
  microplastics from one surface scratch.
• 8:30
  So the. Is the Teflon partially made of
• 8:32
  plastic? Why am I getting microplastics
• 8:34
  from? Well, it kind of is a plastic,
• 8:36
  right? I mean it effectively.
• 8:37
  The thing is a plastic. A plastic you can take up to
• 8:39
  like 500°. Yeah.
• 8:41
  Below 500. Degrees you want to be on the
• 8:42
  underside, preferably below 500°.
• 8:44
  That's why these things typically aren't you, You won't
• 8:46
  see them say that they're broiler safe because it's over
• 8:48
  500° in there. If you leave a nonstick pan, one
• 8:50
  of these PTFE, you know a Teflon coated pan on your, your stove
• 8:54
  and you leave it in with nothing in it and it overheats, but it
• 8:56
  gets over 500°F, that PTFE basically vaporizes, right?
• 9:01
  It begins to to. Pyrolyze, you can make your
• 9:02
  whole family, yeah. And kill all the birds as much
• 9:04
  earlier. You're going to get something
• 9:06
  that they call the Teflon flu. Yeah, where you get chills, a
• 9:09
  fever, sore throat, headaches. It's really terrible.
• 9:12
  It's not what you want. And then making these things is
• 9:14
  even worse. This is sort of the other big
• 9:16
  problem is you get this, these byproducts from the
• 9:19
  manufacturing of these PTFE pans.
• 9:21
  And those chemicals are forever chemicals.
• 9:23
  What that means is they never breakdown, right?
• 9:26
  Like nature is literally not strong enough to break them
• 9:28
  down. So if they get inside you or an
• 9:31
  animal or anything else, they just stay there forever.
• 9:34
  You can't get rid of them. Yeah.
• 9:35
  So yeah, I I would say the broader category, the PFAS are
• 9:38
  bad. PFA is bad.
• 9:39
  I'm saying hang on, I'm writing down.
• 9:40
  No, no. PFA is bad.
• 9:41
  Yes, PFA. Is bad.
• 9:42
  I got that. Excellent.
• 9:43
  These are PFAS. These are.
• 9:44
  Bad. You know I love me some good
• 9:45
  acronyms. You tell me what APFA is.
• 9:48
  Polyfluoroalkali, Polyfluoroalkali.
• 9:52
  There's a lot of vowels there's. A reason you say PFA.
• 9:55
  And there's a sometimes vowel, but that's why we say PFAI have
• 9:58
  never taken organic chemistry. So when it comes to chemistry,
• 10:01
  just forget. It's not one of these things.
• 10:02
  That's APFA, Yeah, Yes, there are 10,000 of these things. 10s
• 10:05
  of thousands of synthetic man made chemicals that have been
• 10:09
  widely used since the 40s right in industrial consumer products.
• 10:13
  And as soon as we get the word out, don't put this in your
• 10:15
  food, they switch to another one of the 10,000.
• 10:18
  No, exactly. And it's all bad.
• 10:19
  They're all bad. They're not.
• 10:21
  And actually someone just switched.
• 10:22
  Do we think might be worse? Like, oh, you're gonna ban that
• 10:24
  one now we're gonna go over to this one.
• 10:25
  So the fact that these things, the, the strength in these,
• 10:29
  right, What makes these coatings super durable is that it's this
• 10:32
  carbon fluorine bond. And it's one of the strongest
• 10:34
  bonds literally in all of science.
• 10:36
  Chemistry. Yeah.
• 10:37
  And nature can't do anything with it.
• 10:39
  That's why we call them forever chemicals.
• 10:40
  They're in everything, by the way, like these things are in.
• 10:42
  Yeah, everything. We're talking about cookware
• 10:44
  because I think it's the the easiest one for us to sort of
• 10:46
  understand. You spray anything with it but
• 10:47
  like absolutely microwave popcorn bags.
• 10:49
  Stop eating microwave popcorn. Those bags microwave popcorn are
• 10:53
  terrible for you. Fast food wrappers, like if
• 10:55
  you've ever seen like that magic paper, you eat your fast food
• 10:58
  and you're like, huh, the grease doesn't go through this paper.
• 11:00
  I wonder how it works. Here's why.
• 11:01
  Guess what? That's what it is.
• 11:03
  So this is, it's so bad that we now find PF as in the rainwater
• 11:08
  in Antarctica where there aren't people or waste, right?
• 11:12
  That water's made it down there. It's in the tissue of Arctic
• 11:14
  polar bears and the bloodstream of, wait for it, 97% of all
• 11:18
  humans. Wow.
• 11:19
  So pretty much every one of us. You know where it's not my
• 11:22
  dental floss. Oh, good, good.
• 11:24
  Man, it's in most dental. Flosses.
• 11:25
  It's in some dental. Floss.
• 11:26
  But if you're very, very careful and you pick your dental floss
• 11:29
  carefully, you can pick one that does not have PFA.
• 11:31
  And so these things bio accumulate, right?
• 11:32
  That's the, that's the, the the real problem with these forever
• 11:35
  chemicals is you can't flush them out as fast as you take
• 11:37
  them in. And then it leads to kidney and
• 11:39
  testicular cancer, thyroid disruption, liver damage, immune
• 11:42
  system suppression. Yeah, it all rolls up into you.
• 11:45
  The regulation on this currently has been like whack A mole, as
• 11:47
  you were saying earlier. They're like, oh, we're gonna
• 11:48
  ban this one specific chemical, but then you can change it,
• 11:51
  tweak it a little bit to be something there.
• 11:53
  You're like, oh, it's not banned.
• 11:53
  Call it. Something else?
• 11:54
  And now you're free to go. Yeah.
• 11:56
  Yeah. Well, I'd argue, I'd argue worse
• 11:57
  that the, the, the, the federal government's not doing much
• 11:59
  about this. But fortunately, there are a
• 12:00
  couple states that have been taking pretty aggressive
• 12:02
  initiative over the past few years to work on getting these
• 12:05
  things banned and pushed out of our that's.
• 12:07
  What I want to talk about, I want to talk about California's
• 12:08
  AB 1200, the disclosure rules, and Maine's total PFA ban and
• 12:12
  how are they effectively changing packaging standards
• 12:16
  because if these things pass, manufacturers who have to
• 12:18
  disclose what is on their pans. So it depends on the state,
• 12:21
  right? This is part of the the
• 12:22
  patchwork that's become what happens when states try to
• 12:24
  regulate this but are. You going to package for 50
• 12:26
  different states or you're just going to sell just these pans in
• 12:28
  California and just these pans? Well, that's the output.
• 12:30
  So like for example, in California, California is an
• 12:33
  out, right, banned all PFAS. They've banned PFAS in plant
• 12:37
  fiber food wrappers, but they've mandated that cookware brands
• 12:41
  explicitly disclose PFAS, right? That's what California has done
• 12:44
  and it's outlawed the deceptive PFOA free marketing claims,
• 12:47
  right? Which is like, oh, hey, we don't
• 12:48
  have any, we don't have that PFA.
• 12:49
  It's like, well, but there's 999,000 other ones that you
• 12:53
  could have, which you do have exactly.
• 12:55
  You have at least some small number of.
• 12:56
  But this reminds me of what CARB did what 30 years ago.
• 13:00
  So CARB, this is the California Air Resource board.
• 13:02
  I remember California is a terrible over legislated state
• 13:05
  you know we can't live in. No, it's.
• 13:07
  No, nobody can operate. You can't run a business some
• 13:09
  level, yadda yadda yadda yadda. If you don't live here, don't
• 13:11
  come by. What carb?
• 13:12
  Did, if you do live here, lucky? 30 ish plus years ago, they
• 13:15
  said, hey, we want to make sure that these cars have these
• 13:17
  catalytic converters and better emissions because we want our
• 13:19
  our residents to be able to breathe the air.
• 13:21
  Yeah. And see more than two city
• 13:23
  blocks, which in the 50s in downtown LA you could not see
• 13:26
  more than one or two city blocks.
• 13:28
  Got a little rough. They said, if you want to sell a
• 13:29
  car in California, it has to meet these standards, it has to
• 13:32
  meet these these standards, these qualifications and
• 13:35
  manufacturer said, OK, we're going to make cars for everybody
• 13:38
  in all the States and they're going to make a California car.
• 13:40
  And they did this for a while. They made California cars.
• 13:42
  When you bought a car, it had to be California compliance.
• 13:45
  That lasted a handful of years. And the car companies realized
• 13:48
  this is dumb. We're going to make all cars
• 13:50
  compliance. So we had this thing called 50
• 13:52
  state cars. So for a while they literally
• 13:54
  made vehicles called 50 state cars.
• 13:56
  You don't have to have the California car in the other
• 13:57
  states. My very, you know, pro
• 13:59
  California stance is the rest of the country can thank
• 14:02
  California. We're pushing better air
• 14:04
  standards on the entire country. Sure.
• 14:06
  And that's not another thing anymore, right Like now and the
• 14:08
  EPA typically, not typically, but the EPA will follow on and
• 14:12
  adopt some of California's regulations, which is what's
• 14:15
  happened in this case. And we have better air as a
• 14:17
  result all over the the country. Talk to me about Maine.
• 14:19
  What's going on in Maine? So while I see the same thing
• 14:21
  happening here with with the PFAS in California, some states
• 14:24
  like Maine are going even farther.
• 14:26
  Maine has said that you cannot, you cannot sell anything where
• 14:31
  you've added PFAS. I think what they're meeting at
• 14:33
  is a therapy. FA is already in it, which big
• 14:35
  spoiler alert, it's already in everything.
• 14:36
  Sure, that's OK, but if you added it to something like
• 14:39
  cookware, cleaning products, cosmetics, they are banned
• 14:41
  outright banned in Maine. And that law has passed, right?
• 14:44
  I believe that law has passed in Minnesota as well.
• 14:46
  Minnesota is is leading the charge with with this as well.
• 14:49
  They're phasing it in. I don't think they're completely
• 14:51
  phased out, which is the right thing.
• 14:53
  I think you need to have a period of time to to get this
• 14:55
  done. But the point is they're saying
• 14:56
  just hard no. It's a slow phase out, it's like
• 14:58
  until 2032 so I can. Just tell you one quick little
• 15:01
  shortcut if you're looking to buy cookware because you're your
• 15:03
  your coast insisted you do a show on on nonstick cookware and
• 15:07
  now you're always able to replace all the cookware in your
• 15:08
  in your home so your family doesn't die.
• 15:10
  If you happen to be that person and you are looking at cookware
• 15:13
  and it says in small, light Gray, italic print not available
• 15:18
  in and then a list of states, yeah, that's not the cookware
• 15:21
  you want to buy. OK, I was a little like, oh, not
• 15:24
  a little Minnesota and Maine. I wonder why?
• 15:26
  Oh, 'cause they. Care that their people not get
• 15:28
  poisoned. Yeah, the other states are OK.
• 15:30
  If you're in Texas, you forget it.
• 15:32
  Alabama, yeah, fill your boots. So.
• 15:34
  But those states have, and they're not the only ones,
• 15:36
  right? New Jersey, New Hampshire have
• 15:38
  have moved on this. New York, Washington, Vermont,
• 15:41
  you're seeing all sorts of bans on this.
• 15:43
  I really do hope that we get some modicum of regulation at
• 15:46
  the federal level, because otherwise this patchwork is a
• 15:49
  mess. Hey, we'll take it where we can
• 15:50
  take it. You got to start somewhere.
• 15:51
  Absolutely. Exactly.
• 15:52
  You take what you can. Yeah, I just remodeled the
• 15:54
  bathroom and there are special California fixtures for like the
• 15:57
  shower and all of these things. And it's like I had to order
• 16:00
  special order the California version.
• 16:02
  By the way, the guy at the heart hardware store was more than
• 16:04
  willing to sell me out the back of the store, the non California
• 16:07
  version. And I was like, no, no, no, I
• 16:08
  want to follow the California rules.
• 16:10
  There's a reason we have these rules in place.
• 16:12
  We put these rules into place. They weren't put upon us.
• 16:15
  We chose Yeah, and they're for good reason.
• 16:16
  My point is you have states that are aggressively moving this
• 16:19
  out, yeah, and and and trying to push these out.
• 16:21
  However, it's a non trivial problem because it's hard to
• 16:23
  communicate to the consumer what is safe and what is so the.
• 16:26
  Labeling this as PFOA free is not going far enough.
• 16:30
  That's not telling us enough. No, because that's what I always
• 16:32
  see. I would almost argue, argue that
• 16:33
  that's worse because now you actually don't know what you're
• 16:36
  getting. But what you know you're not
• 16:37
  getting is the one thing that they're not supposed to put in
• 16:40
  right? But you don't know what else
• 16:41
  they've put in there. 9999 other things, yeah that work just like
• 16:45
  it. I think you got to go a little
• 16:46
  deeper than that. Really.
• 16:47
  If anything says nonstick, you probably don't want it.
• 16:50
  Yeah, I mean that I think that's that's where my current brain
• 16:52
  is. Yeah, maybe I'm overreacting,
• 16:54
  But now you all these brands that are doing this sort of
• 16:56
  greenwashing, right? They're advertising themselves
• 16:58
  as non-toxic and they're saying, oh wait, this is PFOA free and
• 17:02
  we're 100% non-toxic and it's been incredibly mislead.
• 17:05
  There's a class action lawsuit around this, right?
• 17:07
  At least one of these that I know has already been settled.
• 17:09
  It's like this linguistic trickery right?
• 17:11
  You're just saying oh it doesn't have this thing in it now it's
• 17:14
  got all this other stuff in it, but it doesn't have that one
• 17:15
  thing in it. Hex clad who's a brand that that
• 17:17
  is relatively new ish you've seen around they agreed to a
• 17:20
  $2.5 million settlement over allegations of false advertising
• 17:24
  regarding its quote non-toxic and PFAS free claims that's.
• 17:29
  Cheap. I know that's the that was the
• 17:30
  first thing I was like, oh, that seems pretty, pretty cheap.
• 17:32
  They have a permanent injunction against advertising any product
• 17:36
  as PFSA free or or PFOA free or non-toxic.
• 17:39
  I don't think just like leaned into it and they just call their
• 17:41
  pans toxic now. Like I don't like they should
• 17:43
  just maybe get Britney Spears like she's got a song called
• 17:46
  toxic. Like why not just license that
• 17:48
  like that Seems like at this point you the jig is up right?
• 17:51
  You might as well just leave. This after what you make.
• 17:53
  Except what you make exactly, but it's had this effect.
• 17:56
  You have other class action lawsuits.
• 17:57
  There's one against KitchenAid and Anilon.
• 17:59
  The, the, the precedent, I think is pretty clear that you can't
• 18:01
  use the quote real truth about one chemical right to hide the
• 18:05
  presence of a family of chemicals.
• 18:07
  And like also thought that was a good idea.
• 18:09
  Like did you go home at night feeling good about yourself when
• 18:12
  you decided to put that on your box?
• 18:13
  Yes, because they. Thought, oh we're going to make
• 18:15
  so much more money, we're going to sell great non stick pans and
• 18:17
  people will never think we're using the same.
• 18:19
  And and I alluded this earlier, but like the attempts to make
• 18:22
  these PFAS safe aren't actually helping, we actually it might be
• 18:25
  making it worse are short. Chain PFA alternatives any
• 18:29
  safer? No, we they actually might be
• 18:31
  worse. Why?
• 18:31
  These what we would call legacy. I see long chain PFAS.
• 18:35
  Yeah. These ones have like a a
• 18:36
  molecular spine of eight or more carbon atoms.
• 18:38
  Yeah. They were phased out due to
• 18:40
  these health scandals, right. And chemical companies engineer
• 18:42
  these short chain alternatives and they only have 4 to 6
• 18:45
  carbon. Fantastic.
• 18:46
  So they must be better. There's those last four carbon
• 18:48
  atoms that were really doing the damage.
• 18:50
  This is the. Gen.
• 18:50
  X kind of stuff. Well, I don't want to.
• 18:52
  What this is, I don't want to throw it all into that bucket,
• 18:54
  but yeah, I mean, it's Gen. X or PFBS, you'll see them
• 18:57
  called. But here's the thing.
• 18:58
  The selling point was that, Oh, well, you can flush these out of
• 19:01
  your body faster because now instead of taking, you know, you
• 19:04
  can do it in weeks instead of years.
• 19:05
  Fantastic. Which is true, again, that that
• 19:08
  we think is true, but it ignores the reality of constant
• 19:11
  exposure. And now that they're everywhere,
• 19:13
  you're reingesting them through food and water.
• 19:15
  So now your organs never actually get a a chance to, to
• 19:17
  get a break. You're just cycling through them
• 19:19
  faster. Yeah.
• 19:20
  And they're hard to get out of the water.
• 19:21
  Supply. That's the fun of the forever
• 19:22
  chemicals. Come on, like this is terrible.
• 19:25
  These might actually be worse. The better answer is to just not
• 19:29
  have either the long or the short chain.
• 19:31
  That, to me, is the better answer.
• 19:32
  Yeah, sure, sure. This is all doom and gloom,
• 19:34
  right? You're thinking like, oh, OK,
• 19:35
  that what am I going to do for cookware?
• 19:36
  There are some nonstick alternatives.
• 19:39
  I'm putting nonstick in quotes that are safer for humans and
• 19:42
  better to cook with. Are.
• 19:43
  There some sort of futuristic materials that are super safe.
• 19:46
  That's that's well question. We're all one.
• 19:48
  No, sort of No, no sort of no is really the really No is the
• 19:53
  answer. So really I should just cook on
• 19:54
  air? No, you really from my
• 19:56
  observation, I'm no expert. From my observation, there's
• 19:59
  really three things that you should be cooking on either
• 20:01
  stainless steel. That's what I cook.
• 20:03
  These are widely available, right?
• 20:05
  You'll commonly see three or five ply all that's a great
• 20:08
  brand. There are other brands too, but
• 20:10
  typically a three ply or five ply.
• 20:12
  They they sandwich a material in the middle, usually for better
• 20:14
  heat connectivity. It's usually either copper or
• 20:17
  it'll be aluminum. In most cases.
• 20:18
  Those are great. They're completely inert.
• 20:20
  It doesn't react with your food and even stuff that's acidic
• 20:23
  like tomato sauce. It has 0 coatings, 0 PFAS and
• 20:27
  handles super hot. Heat and I'm looking at
• 20:28
  induction stove and they seem to work great on the induction
• 20:31
  stove. Stainless steel is lovely stuff,
• 20:33
  can stick to it badly if you mistreat the.
• 20:36
  Pans does stick to it, yeah. Not can stuff does stick.
• 20:39
  Well, I mean, if you use it right, like for example, if I'm
• 20:41
  doing a sear like on a piece of fish or or scallops something,
• 20:44
  you have to use something like a stainless steel.
• 20:46
  It's gonna get you the best bit of that, that fond.
• 20:48
  Yeah, but stainless steel is great.
• 20:49
  I love cast iron. I use a lot of cast iron.
• 20:52
  However, you have to be careful with cast iron for a handful of
• 20:54
  reasons. While you don't have to about
• 20:56
  damaging the pan from like a metal utensil, you do have to
• 20:59
  worry about what you cook in it 'cause the with the cast iron,
• 21:01
  the surface you're cooking on isn't the actual iron itself per
• 21:04
  SE. You've you've polymerized
• 21:06
  effectively fats and oils, old food, yes yeah.
• 21:09
  So you never want to clean it with soap.
• 21:10
  You want to clean it with just hot water and a stiff brush
• 21:13
  Yeah. And you can use the hard
• 21:14
  utensils, that's fine. But you definitely do not want
• 21:17
  to use anything acidic inside the pan 'cause it'll one, it'll,
• 21:20
  it'll RIP off the layer that you've put on and it'll also
• 21:23
  suck up the the flavor, the metallic flavor.
• 21:25
  Yeah, sure, sure. Which is not good.
• 21:26
  So like any spaghetti sauce or any sort of tomato sauce, you
• 21:28
  don't in there. But the great thing is they're
• 21:30
  toxic free and you can use them on campfires.
• 21:32
  Like if you do you ever have a cast iron pan that you've
• 21:34
  completely screwed up and burnt something in?
• 21:37
  You know how you clean it? You just throw it in the fire
• 21:39
  and leave it burn it out. Like you could warp it.
• 21:41
  You don't really want to do that because it gets super hot in
• 21:43
  there but it will just literally char everything off and you
• 21:46
  scrape it off and re oil it you. Can get it really hot without
• 21:47
  damaging. Super hot.
• 21:48
  I mean my so if I'm doing steaks, I sear them exclusively
• 21:51
  on cast iron. Cast iron does a great job of
• 21:53
  retaining the heat too. So it radiates a lot of heat out
• 21:55
  and it's really great for searing the the mid ground here
• 21:58
  on these are what you were referring to earlier the top of
• 22:00
  the show, which is enameled cast iron.
• 22:02
  So that's cast iron. What I'm gonna ask what about my
• 22:04
  locker set stuff? Is that work?
• 22:05
  Yeah, Locker set's not the only brand that does this.
• 22:07
  They are certainly the most popular.
• 22:09
  I have some Locker set where I also have some Lodge.
• 22:11
  I have a lot. All my cast iron is Lodge.
• 22:12
  I also have some enameled Lodge, like Dutch ovens, and they're
• 22:15
  really good. They're heavy, like all cast
• 22:17
  iron. Yeah.
• 22:17
  It's basically cast iron that's glass coated.
• 22:19
  It's glass. Coated.
• 22:20
  Yeah. You basically coat it with sand,
• 22:22
  right, Which gives you a handful of things.
• 22:23
  One they they bake it at a bajillion degrees to to turn
• 22:26
  that sand into glass. But they look beautiful.
• 22:27
  They look beautiful. They last forever They are
• 22:29
  cleanable. You really can't ruin them.
• 22:31
  They are. They're not damaged by the and
• 22:33
  heat cycling. They're really lovely.
• 22:35
  They're not what I would consider nonstick per SE.
• 22:38
  You still have to use a fat to get it to release.
• 22:39
  Yeah, but you can literally go buy a set of locker set and plan
• 22:42
  on your grandkids owning them from you like you can just hand
• 22:45
  them. Sure, these things are forever,
• 22:46
  last forever. By the way, this is what I was
• 22:48
  saying earlier. You need a moving company to
• 22:50
  lift them up out of the cupboard.
• 22:51
  Yes, and put them on the stove. Now, there's a learning curve to
• 22:54
  any of these. You're gonna have to.
• 22:55
  You have to use a fat. You can't drop an egg into a pan
• 22:58
  without a fat on it. Yeah, it's going to stick like
• 23:00
  crazy. So there's a little bit of a
• 23:01
  learning curve, but man, is it well worth it.
• 23:03
  And and now you've got something that is much more durable and
• 23:05
  much safer for you and your family.
• 23:06
  And a better tasting egg. Yes, for sure, you know.
• 23:08
  Geckos are in Hawaii, those little lizard like things,
• 23:10
  they're called geckos. They can literally walk up
• 23:12
  glass. Yeah, they can't walk up Teflon.
• 23:14
  It's. Crazy.
• 23:14
  It's like the one thing they do like, no.
• 23:16
  That's how slick it is. Not doing it.
• 23:17
  Now I'm gonna answer the question that everyone has had
• 23:19
  since we started this episode. If Teflon does not stick to
• 23:22
  anything, how does it stick to the pan?
• 23:24
  That is a great question. They blast these metal pans so
• 23:27
  that has this incredibly rough surface, craggy surface or
• 23:30
  surface, and then they'll put this Teflon in it.
• 23:32
  They'll super heat it up so it melts into the cracks.
• 23:34
  It essentially locks itself into the surface of the pan.
• 23:37
  Yeah, it's kind of more that it has like Stockholm syndrome than
• 23:39
  it's really stuck to the pan, is that it's just sort of trapped
• 23:42
  there. If you listen really closely to
• 23:44
  one of your Teflon bands, you can hear it screaming, trying to
• 23:46
  get away. All right, that is the episode
• 23:48
  we have to get out of here, but quickly before we do, have you
• 23:50
  seen it read anything good this last week?
• 23:53
  While I'm ignoring the last week part, I would have liked to have
• 23:55
  read this again this past week, but given that we're talking
• 23:58
  highlighting things in the kitchen that you didn't know and
• 24:00
  don't want to think about, namely your pans to recommend
• 24:03
  one of my favorite reads of all time, which is Anthony
• 24:06
  Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential Adventures in the Culinary
• 24:09
  Underbelly. It is an excellent book and and
• 24:11
  it remains the definitive adrenaline fueled blueprint that
• 24:14
  permanently shattered the pristine food television
• 24:17
  illusion of the restaurant industry.
• 24:18
  Yeah, it's just so much fun to read.
• 24:20
  I'm going to go read it again just from talking about it here.
• 24:22
  He's imitating Hunter S Thompson in his prose, yes, but the
• 24:26
  things he's saying are not things.
• 24:27
  Hunter S Thompson. Hunter S Thompson never talked
• 24:29
  about kitchens. Yeah, it was.
• 24:30
  It was like for a brief moment we had two Hunter S Thompson.
• 24:32
  And yes, and this was at least when, like, celebrity chefs were
• 24:35
  treated like these polished Saints, right?
• 24:37
  Like, they look, like, amazing. Yeah.
• 24:38
  And Bourdain pulled back the curtain to reveal this.
• 24:41
  Like a grueling, often drug fueled pirate ship subculture of
• 24:45
  like misfits and visionaries and thieves.
• 24:47
  Thieves, especially thieves, these chefs who were taking the
• 24:50
  tips from their waiters and their cook staff.
• 24:52
  Yes, it was terrible. It's this timeless, practical
• 24:55
  survival wisdom for diners. That was my other favorite part
• 24:58
  is like, most famously, it warned the public to never order
• 25:01
  fish on a Monday because you're getting the fish from last week,
• 25:04
  of course, but also treated the grueling, sweat soaked labor of
• 25:07
  everyday line cooks with this profound, visceral respect,
• 25:09
  which they deserve. Yeah.
• 25:10
  For me, it functions less like a culinary memoir, of course, and
• 25:13
  more like an authentic, beautifully written love letter
• 25:15
  to the chaos of the kitchen. Yeah.
• 25:16
  And all the people that keep it running, which I had never
• 25:19
  really thought about much before reading that book.
• 25:21
  Yeah. I I love to cook.
• 25:22
  As we've we've said many times in the show, people like once
• 25:24
  you open a restaurant, I'm like, no, no, that's way too much
• 25:26
  work. And I do fear would ruin the
• 25:28
  love of cooking. So the people that still do it
• 25:30
  and love to do it, I don't know how they do it.
• 25:32
  So anyway, we're didn't didn't just expose the industry's dark
• 25:35
  underbelly, he celebrated its its burning passion, forever
• 25:38
  changing how I, and I expect everyone else who read it, view
• 25:40
  the people behind the plates. And I've had so much more
• 25:43
  respect for everyone from the front of house to the back of
• 25:45
  house. It's an impossible.
• 25:47
  Business, it is an impossible business and to do it at scale,
• 25:50
  I mean. Or they're laundering drug
• 25:51
  money. It's one of the.
• 25:52
  Other or both. It could be both, could be one
• 25:54
  of the other and I'm actually exclusive, though pigeonhole
• 25:56
  them anyway, that's Anthony Berdain's 2007 Kitchen
• 25:59
  Confidential Adventures in the Culinary underbelly.
• 26:01
  Do read it you'll you'll RIP through it in a a day or two.
• 26:04
  It's a lot of fun. Man I do miss that guy for sure.
• 26:06
  How about you? The 2014 film Chef Of Course,
• 26:09
  which follows Carl Kasper, played perfectly by Jon Favreau,
• 26:12
  A prominent Los Angeles chef stuck in a creative rut due to a
• 26:15
  controlling restaurant owner, played by Dustin Hoffman.
• 26:18
  After a disastrous review from food critic played by Oliver
• 26:21
  Platt leads to a public social meltdown, Carl loses his job.
• 26:24
  Prompted by his wealthy ex-wife, played by Sofia Vergara.
• 26:27
  Carl heads to Miami where he gets a rundown food truck with
• 26:29
  the help of his loyal sous chef, played by John Legazamo.
• 26:32
  Reconnecting, there's a strange son.
• 26:34
  Carl launches an artisanal Cubano sandwich truck.
• 26:37
  Together they drive cross country back to LA, using
• 26:39
  Twitter to spark a viral food frenzy, rediscovering his
• 26:42
  artistic passion and rebuilding his family along the way.
• 26:45
  I absolutely love this film Chef on Netflix.
• 26:49
  Now I don't. Think I know about this?
• 26:51
  Oh. And not only that, this spawned
• 26:53
  a spin off series because Roy Choi was a consultant on the
• 26:55
  movie. In fact, really most delightful
• 26:57
  things. I'm not spoiling anything, but
• 26:59
  at the safe for the end credits, you will see Roy Choi coaching
• 27:01
  Jon Favreau on how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.
• 27:04
  It's the most delightful scene. So this was so good.
• 27:06
  The two of them made another series, which is also on
• 27:08
  Netflix, which is all about chefing.
• 27:10
  And Roy Choi is teaching Jon Favreau all of these tricks of
• 27:13
  the kitchen and things. It's just.
• 27:15
  Marvelous. That's amazing.
• 27:16
  No, I haven't even heard of this.
• 27:17
  I'm have to go watch this. So good.
• 27:18
  It's. Such a delightful movie.
• 27:20
  This sounds great. That is the episode.
• 27:21
  Thank you for joining us for all this nonsense.
• 27:23
  It's really terrible podcast from the awful company.
• 27:25
  This isn't the way, but nonsense dot productions.
• 27:27
  I'm CJ Little. I'm Jeff Parker.
• 27:29
  If you like this program, please follow Donald, subscribe and
• 27:31
  like at Apple Podcast, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Antenna
• 27:33
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• 27:37
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• 27:38
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• 27:41
  its editing systems. Infinite customization for
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  maximum productivity with no ads and no bullet wear.
• 27:47
  As always, open source and free you.
• 27:49
  Nerd, We'll be here maybe next Tuesday, maybe not.
• 27:51
  And every Thursday we'll be here, the occasional Tuesday and
• 27:54
  most Thursdays, depending on sports schedule and when I got
• 27:57
  to go to school for more nonsense.
• 27:58
  Please join us on the days we happen to be here.
• 28:00
  Subscribe. You'll find out there's a lot of
• 28:02
  surprises. Sometimes we show up, sometimes
• 28:04
  we don't. Not that I'm against eating
• 28:18
  disgusting things. I'll have blue cheese all day
• 28:20
  long. First of all, I because I'm I'm
• 28:22
  civilized. I don't live in the 60s.
• 28:23
  I just see cheese. I don't see color blue cheese.
• 28:27
  Can't we just call it cheese? It's just cheese.
• 28:29
  It's just a cheese. You don't have to label it
• 28:32
  because of its color. OK.