Metal toxicity: How food cooked in different metal cookware impact your health

The trend of cooking in metal utensils has increased and people always look for their best cookware, and the risk of metal toxicity has also increased with it which is slowly impacting your health.

It leads to serious health issues, and we don’t even imagine it comes from our cooking utensils.

Many consider eating healthy food and avoiding unhealthy foods, but our cookware makes it harmful for us by adding a high amount of toxic metals.

So how cooking in different cookware is affecting our health negatively and makes us sick. So let’s discuss metal toxicity first, and then we see how different utensils impact our health.

What is metal toxicity?

Heavy metals are toxic to humans, as they can cause poisoning effects.

The metals that cause poisonous effects include lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, cadmium, and many more.

Nowadays, we live in a toxic world, but metal toxicity commonly occurs from water pollution, food, metal utensils, or metal-coated containers, air pollution, and medicines.

We can’t eliminate them from our lives, but we can take precautions to control them at some level.

Eliminating the cooking in metal utensils is under our control to reduce it by using safe utensils.

Cookware sets:

There are many types of metal containers available for cooking. All of them cause health effects by adding different metals in our food.

Here I will discuss some of the trendy cookwares that impact our health.

Cast iron cookware:

Many people have a myth that they can fulfill their iron needs by cooking food in cast iron cookware.

But it’s wrong. Cast iron is used to make the cookware non-stick, but the reality is it comes from the ferrous.

Ferrous iron is what makes your blood-red. But our body can’t eliminate the iron that comes from the cast iron pans.

Cast iron cookware has the untreated form of iron that sticks in our kidneys and can cause severe effects like joint pains, arthritis, kidney stone, and many more.

If the iron level in your body reaches to the toxic levels, it may cause stress and oxidation of essential nutrients in our body like Vitamin C.

Cast iron skillet:

Cast iron skillet is the pan that is used for frying. So it has a heavy coating of iron that causes an increase in rancidity.

Newer cast iron skillet pans have more iron leaching into the food. If you cook acidic food in cast iron skillets, iron’s leaching effect becomes double or triple the normal.

The human body requires only a minor amount of iron daily, but if it exceeds that range, you have to face adverse effects like metallic toxicity.

Excess of iron in the food may lead to life-threatening conditions, such as liver disease, heart problems, diabetes and hypothyroidism.

Excess iron is then stored in the liver and pancreas, which leads to liver diseases and pancreas.

Non-stick pan:

Non-stick pans are convenient to use and wash. But it has many adverse effects if it gets any scratch or any chip or flake removal.

Non-stick pans are the Teflon resins that may produce an adverse impact
when heated above 400F.

Non-stick pans have coating stainless steel and cast aluminum, which may leach into the food at higher temperatures.

These coatings produce hard, dry, and smooth layers that make them non-stick when cooking food with little oil.

The synonyms of metallic toxicity from the non-stick pans include flue, fever,
boy ache, nausea, or vomiting.

According to research, non-stick pans can cause congenital disabilities like cancer or heart diseases, and the leaching of these metal blood remains in the body for four years.

Ceramic cookware:

Ceramic cookware is safer than many other metallic utensils. But if there is only a coating of ceramic layers on the cookware, it may cause adverse effects.

So try to get 100% ceramic utensils for cooking purposes.

When you use ceramic plated cookware for daily use, it leaches the lead and cadmium into the food.

Lead poisoning is a dangerous type of metal poisoning and results in abdominal pain, headaches, and many other health-related issues.

Conclusion:

Metal toxicity is a severe type of poisoning so try to keep yourself from it.

Many other utensils are available in the market, like wooden cookware that doesn’t cause any adverse health effects.

So try to avoid metallic cookware for the sake of your health.