Nonstick cooking pans

Fluorine can replace Ca when in the form of hydrofluoric acid (HF), which is a weak acid with a tenacious capacity for destruction. On the other hand, fluorine fills gaps made by tooth decaying bacteria, and for this reason has been added as fluoride (F ) to public drinking water in the United States in an effort to improve oral hygiene. It s also used in nonstick cooking pans in the form of poly(tetrafluoroethene), also known as PTFE or Teflon. 

Teflon is used as a nonstick coating on cooking pans. 

The use of a nonstick frying pan or griddle for making pancakes eliminates the need for oiling the cooking surface. 

Stop using nonstick or Teflon pans, which are known to cause cancer. Cast-iron cookware is the way to go. Glass and stainless steel are equally safe to cook with. Store your food in glass instead of plastic. 

The concept of covalent bonding provides useful insight into the chemical properties of fluorine compounds, such as PTFE. Although it is certainly vital that a PTFE-coated pan is nonflammable and that the coating doesn t react with the food we cook, the property we appreciate when we are washing the dishes is the nonstick aspect of the polymer. As we will see by the end of this chapter, covalent bonding plays a role here, too. 

To simulate possible effects of the cooking process on PFC content, samples of a fatty fish, in which PFHpA and PFOA were identified and quantified, were cooked at 180°C for 30 min in two nonstick pans, one characterized by a new and integral coating and the other by a damaged one. Comparison analyses, performed for the uncooked and the cooked samples, showed similar results to indicate that cooking process did not modify PFC concentration [11]. 

Nutrition can come not just from the food that people eat but also from the vessels in which they cook it. Cooking foods in a cast-fron pot rather than a nonstick or glass pan, for instance, increases the amount of iron—an essential mineral found in hemoglobin, or blood molecules— in the finished dish. 

Teflon is a polymer of tetrafluoroethylene, often referred to as PTFE. It is well known as a nonsticking surface on the frying pan and other cooking utensils. It has a low coefficient of friction and is chemically inert and thermally stable to over 300°C. 

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