The Nonstick Dilemma

Teflon is out. But are the alternatives any safer?

It feels very surreal to publish a newsletter about cooking utensils, when so many of my friends just lost their homes.

I am writing from my in-laws’ home, where we are taking shelter. Our Pasadena house sits empty in a cloud of smoke and falling ash. While our street was spared from the flames, the area that burned was an integral part of our community. It was where we hiked, where my kids went to forest school, where my favorite plant nursery was, and where so many of our friends had built enviably peaceful lives set against the mountains. And now, it’s just, gone.

On Tuesday night, I sat at a bar with my dear friend and recent NY transplant to Los Angeles, Hannah Goldfield. We imagined this as just a windy day, and spoke about her transition and her move. I tried to offer my own experience moving from East to West as inspiration. A native New Yorker, it took me years to settle in to a slower pace of Pasadena. With time, my definition of “community” evolved. In New York, it was based on industry connections, and showing up in the places where I should be. Now, the success of my life was rooted in relationships with multigenerational neighbors and like-minded parents seeking a balance of creative work, nature, culture, and family life. In the past couple of years, I embraced a kind of peace that can only come from finding one’s place in the world.

When I checked my phone after dinner, everything changed.

I don’t know how to make sense of place that offers so much nourishment, and so much terror. I don’t know how of make sense of a life with so much love, but also so much devastation. I’ll work on that, and get back to you. In the meantime, here’s what I learned about nonstick pans.

Hiking in Eaton Canyon with Red when she was a baby.

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I recently found myself befuddled while shopping for nonstick pans, and it occurred to me that you might be feeling the same way. The market for nonstick cookware is rife with confusion — what is a kitchen godsend, and what is a toxic threat? How can we synthesize all the information on the market, with options ranging from ye’ ol carbon steel, to newfangled entirely ceramic pots and pans?

Nonstick cookware made its debut with the invention of Teflon. At last, you could cook an egg without bathing it in oil. Progress was not without consequence. Teflon is made from PFAS, aka "forever chemicals," that can cause hormonal disruption, respiratory problems, and cancer.

I knew you couldn’t use metal on a Teflon pan for fear of scratching the surface and releasing chemicals and microplastics into food. But what I didn’t know was that the surface also degrades at high temp, around 450°F (a burner on a medium flame reaches a temp of 350-400°F), and if you heat the pan without oil or food inside. Teflon is being canceled due to environmental and health concerns, but it’s still disguised as “PTFE” in many products on the shelves, so it’s not a bygone concern.

So what about the other non-stick options? In my research I found that much of the newer coated cookware has some of the same concerns as the old, menacing Teflon, unless you are unrealistically fastidious in the way you use it.

There are two main categories on the market: coated and uncoated. Lets break it down.

Ceramic + Granite Coated Cookware

Ceramic and granite coatings (made from silica or stone) are applied to the surface of pans that are otherwise made from either PTFE (Teflon), aluminum, or stainless steel. Like Teflon coatings, these coatings can degrade at higher temps. While the coating in this instance is not toxic, their base material can be. It is critical to know what the core of the pan is made of to determine whether or not it can become non-toxic over time.