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My name is Monica Haas.

I am a registered and licensed dietitian.

And today I'm going to be answering two questions

from Dishing of Nutrition listeners.

So the first question is, in detoxing your home,

are ceramic pots marketed as safe alternatives

to non-stick teflon pans. Safe. We also got a second question

about cast iron cookware that I'm also going to address since it fits nicely. It reads,

I see some cast iron pans are seasoned with vegetable oil.

Is this a concern or doesn't that matter?

These are great questions, so let's dig in.

And I want to start by giving a little background on nonstick cookware, what they are made from,

and why it might be in our best interest to avoid traditional

nonstick cookware. So in the 1950s and 1960s, cookware by Teflon, so that's the brand name

for these nonstick pans, became a household staple. Nonstick cookware contains PFAs, which are chemicals that were invented in the 1930s.

These chemicals are water, grease, and stain resistant, and they're used in a lot of things, not just cookware.

They sound very appealing because we all know the pain of washing

a pan that has food stuck in it. It's not fun, but really in recent decades, we've been learning

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