Do you painstakingly add fruits and vegetables whenever you can to your children’s meals and snacks? Do you avoid giving them too many bad fats and foods with added chemicals? Sorry to say this Moms and Dads, but even after all this hard work, they may still be ingesting the chemicals PFOA (perfluorooctanoid acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonate) from your non-stick cookware. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has found that children and teens with higher levels of these chemicals in their blood also have higher total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels.
Though non-stick cookware is a big source of these chemicals, they are also found in drinking water, dust, food packaging, and even the air. They are also used to waterproof fabric and upholstery, so in other words, they are all around us and they can be hard to avoid. In fact, almost all samples of human blood contain these chemicals.
It may be worth it to use stainless steel pans with healthy oils to avoid sticking (and a little elbow grease) instead of non-stick pans. Sometimes convenience comes with a price, and in the case of non-stick cookware, it’s our health.