Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva Podcast I'm Monica Reinagle and today

we're talking about whether non-stick cookware is safe to use.

Non-stick pans are extremely popular

and it's not hard to see why.

Clean up is a breeze thanks to a special coating

that keeps food from bonding to the surface of the pan.

And that non-stick surface also allows you to cook with less or even no oil or butter.

But are they safe?

Most non-stick pans are coated with polytetrifloraeethylene, also known as Teflon. And there are a lot of rumors out

there that Teflon might be toxic and that these pans might not be safe to use. One concern is that that non-stick coating might

flake off and be ingested with the food. Now this is much more likely to happen with a

cheaper or poor quality pan or even just those that haven't been well taken care of.

Using metal implements, for example, can scratch even a high quality non-stick surface and make it more likely to

flake. The good news is that ingesting small flakes of non-stick coating is not

dangerous. This material is going to just pass right through

your body. However, it does definitely reduce the non-stickiness of the pan.

Fortunately, most manufacturers of non-stick pans have now phased out the use of

parlorooctanoic acid or PFOA, and that's a suspected carcinogen.

Non-stick pans never were our biggest source of exposure to this chemical,

but you know that's one less thing to worry about.

Even without PFOA, overheating these pans can still create some problems, however.

When these pans get too hot, compounds in that coating can be released into the air as fumes.

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