Is Stainless Steel Cookware Non-Toxic?

Toxic is something sounds scary to most of us. We have been doing all things necessary to avoid toxic, to keep our life healthy. But how if the toxic comes from the cookware that we use to cook our food every day? We cannot always eat raw food, such as vegetables and fruits only. We also need other nutrition where we can get from animal’s meat, and it should be cooked first before eaten. Although we still have many various ways of cooking, using pans/pots above the stove is the most comfortable choice that we have. And for doing it, we need a good heat conductor that can resist some of the harmful substance. Stainless steel cookware has been the best choice of almost all the household, especially in the USA. Stainless steel cookware has good durability, simple treatment, and still shiny as new when you just washed it even when it’s old. It seems like stainless steel is undoubted anymore, but still, there is some hesitancy about its safety.

“This is true but it is not false”

Some people believe that stainless steel cookware can contaminate chemicals in the food if it is heated to a certain temperature. This is true but we cannot say that it is not false. We have to look at what is stainless steel made from first. We all know that stainless steel is a combination of different types of metals, mostly iron, chromium, nickel, carbon, etc. 

There are some different grades of stainless steel especially for cooking, based on the percentage of each metal element in the steel. Nickel and chromium are pretty cheap than the others so low-quality brands will make stainless steel cookware mostly consists of chromium and nickel. But popular stainless steel cookware brands like WearEver, Cuisinart, T-fal, etc, never compromise with the quality. Among all the metals, nickel and chromium have the biggest and riskiest potentials to be toxicants when they are encountering a certain heat temperature. So, there is a possibility that these metal elements will leach into your food. They are carcinogenic, which can cause cancer. If you keep consuming food which is cooked using mostly nickel cookware in a long period, your chance to have cancer will be increased.

There is no definitive answer to this

With all the advantages, cooking with stainless steel cookware is likely everyone’s favorite. Even professional chefs in five-star restaurants use it. It is sturdy and doesn’t corrode or rust like other metal cookware such as cast iron. And if you want to learn, this type of cookware also can be non-sticky depends on how you cook. You can subscribe to a professional chef YouTube channel and see how he manages the oil so the food will not stick to the pan. Browse as many as possible articles that contain tips and tricks for using stainless steel cookware.

Finally, there is no absolute answer to is stainless steel cookware non-toxic or not. Not because we don’t know how it works, but it all depends on the choice you make. If you really have to go with the stainless-steel cookware, invest on the nickel-free one or at least the good grade one, because your health should be number one priority.