How can Cooking Pots Endanger your Health?

Certain materials are more inert than others. This means the pots you use to cook with can interact with the food you make. Traces of metals can make their way into your food.

This is not so important for adults. For babies and small children it can be a risk to health. Experts are divided on exactly what the effects are. The biggest risks are attached to those who are allergic to certain metals. And babies can’t always tell you what has given them a stomachache or that unsightly rash.

When your cooking pots are shiny and new, there is no risk. As soon as they begin to get chipped, the metals they are made of can get into your food. Here are some tips from the experts to help you avoid any health risks:

- Avoid using copper pots that are not lined or insulated to prepare your baby’s food. Copper can break down folic acid and vitamins C and E once it is heated to a high enough temperature. Many food items are acidic, particularly pickled food and rich sauces that contain vinegar. Acidic foods break down the copper in your pots – and this is deposited in your food.

- Tiny amounts of aluminium can get into your baby’s food if you heat up something acidic in an aluminium pot. A safer alternative is anodized aluminium cookware which prevents any aluminium getting into your food.

- Pots made of stainless steel are much safer because they don’t react with food despite being made of a mixture of different metals. But you’d be better off not using them to prepare baby food if the pots are old – especially if they are dented or chipped.

- You should avoid cooking your baby’s food in non-stick pans because the non-stick coating may chip off and end up in the food. It is also believed that toxic fumes can be released by heating a non-stick pan to a very high temperature.

In general, scrubbing your stainless steel cookware with an abrasive substance such as wire wool is not a great idea. As well as scratching your pots, it releases small quantities of of nickel and chromium into your food.

It’s not all bad news, though. Cooking with iron cooking pots can benefit your health. When you cook acidic foods such as tomatoes in iron, the foods actually “pull” the iron from the pot. This can raise the amount of iron in your food, which is essential for a healthy diet.

The FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition say that ceramic, glass and enameled cookware is safe. They recommend not using older enameled cookware because it may contain cadmium. Cadmium is toxic and is no longer used in the manufacture of cookware in the US.