That being said, It might not be as bad as living with a smoker (as the NYT asserted) but it is bad for you. The YouTuber Climate Town did an excellent video on gas cooking which exposed some very nasty truths of the gas lobbyists and the negative health effects it has on the population.
Citations are in the description: https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54
would love to see an induction stove with a usable UI. everything I have used is designed by a person that never had to cook for more than 1. the automatic off during the slightest spill, and the impossibility to operate buttons with wet/greasy hands, has to be one of the biggest design mistakes in the history of engineering.
my idea of a great time is to invite this engineer to cook with me a 4 course dinner for 8, where everything is timing crucial, and I get to scream at them like Gordon Ramsey the minute the stove switches off and they lost momentum with the heat but can't operate the button because "wet fingers".
the problem isn't induction and consumers cooking with gas, but that we have a culture operating on "ownership and exploitation" of the environment.
I like induction stoves. Easier to clean, and do 90% of what I need doing in a kitchen. Not having to run gas lines is a plus, and for the other 10%, I'm probably working on a grill or using a dedicated burner anyway.
But the UIs are awful.
Stop turning yourself off. Yes, I do intend to cook the thing I put on you for six hours. Just fucking do it.
Give me a knob. Gas stoves use knobs for good reasons. You don't need to invent new UX, just give me a motherfucking knob. A knob without complicated family issues is fine as well.
My stove does not need Bluetooth or WiFi. It's a stove. I expect it to work with minor maintenance for 40+ years. Protocols are going to change a lot between here and there.
I am not installing your app. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Baphomet will call up and tell me he got right with Jesus before I install your app.
There has to be a market for people that want appliances that just... work.
Addendum: there are a few induction stoves with knobs, but they are definitely the exception, rather than the rule:
- https://www.bluestarcooking.com/cooking/cooktops/36-turn-ind...
- https://performwireless.com/7-best-induction-cooktops-with-k... (half of these are not full-size built-ins)
The other problem to watch out for is poor reliability due to gradual "cooking" of the circuit board -- after all, the knobs are not physically connected to the power electronics; they're just a digital input to a controller, same as for the touch controlled units.
The showroom had this Beko range with knobs and no Wifi or "smart" stuff for ~half the starting price of their (so-called) "pro" ranges: https://www.yaleappliance.com/kitchen/cooking-appliances/ran...
I think I'm going with this GE ("Café") double-oven option for my small kitchen, as long as I can confirm the Wifi stuff is strictly optional and isn't in the failure path: https://www.yaleappliance.com/kitchen/cooking-appliances/ran...
Other options with knobs were from Miele, Fischer and Paykel, and (less expensively) LG. I believe Samsung also sells a range with knobs; see the photo in the article.
Spilling have to be a gas thing? I experience it maybe once every three months on a induction oven (what I have at home).
I hated the gas oven when I studied in US, impossible to control the temperature accurately and boilover almost every time. Not even any faster.
If you're not spilling, you're not cooking hard enough. :)
Gas does provide easier temperature regulation, as the change is (a) instantaneous; and (b) infinitely fine-grained compared to the average "levels" of an induction stove.
A good gas burner also puts out a more consistent heat pattern, as opposed to the "ring of burning" that is common to most induction cooktops.
But for most things, induction is good enough, and I appreciate the day-to-day versatility of "just wipe it down".
I bet none of the commercial induction cooktops are internet of shit devices.
I bought an AEG stove last year (similar to [1], but an older model I think). Physical knobs for temperature control, no auto off on spills. Touch interface only for a few convenience features and the extra power mode, which is fine by me. I'm very happy with this stove and like cooking with it just as much as I liked gas when I had it a few years ago.
[1] https://www.aeg.com/kitchen/cooking/cookers/electric-cooker/...
Mine has all touch controls but I love it. I think it might be my favourite appliance in the new kitchen.
A big slab of black glass with nothing to trap dirt on.
We had to replace a few old aluminium pans with nice Samuel Groves carbon steel ones but I think it was well worth it.
I haven’t had many boil overs or any switch offs.
It has more than enough power when needed. 230v 40amp dedicated supply and RCD I think but it could be 50amp, can't remember.
I would not go back to gas.
I’m not sure I’d want a plug-in 13amp unit though. Seems a bit weedy compared to a real hob.
The fan and high-pitched pan noise is not my favorite though.
How is it for keeping a constant, low-mid temperature? One of the issues I have with induction is that the heat is applied in bursts rather than as a constant with gas
This means that when frying with some oils, induction will either heat them past their smoke point in the burst or the temperature will be too low in-between bursts
That said, I'm probably an ok cook at best and I don't eat meat so I can't really say how it would work with that. However, I found that at least the gas range I used when I lived in the UK, wasn't really great for low temperatures either, as the flame tended to not self-sustain properly on low settings.
The killer feature for me personally was actually the steambake thing, as I bake bread weekly. It's not quite as good as directly spraying water into the oven, but still works really well. Obviously independent of the induction top though.
Olive oil has indeed been one of the problematic ones for me - to be fair, it might simply come down to my inexperience cooking with induction
I think I will get some additional cast iron cookware when I make the switch. Hopefully it'll be able to retain the heat better between bursts and make the average temperature more stable :-)
I appreciate that you took the time to answer my question. Hope you have a pleasant day
Also, and this might just be me, but they are fun to use because they require a bit of skill to use. This is like how it can be more fun to drive a standard car than an automatic-shift one.
My unit is just single-hob portable induction cooker from Duxtop: 15 heat settings -- think of it like continuous power settings -- and I think? about 10 (cycling) temperature settings.
I'm quite optimistic that a high-end unit such as the one used in the Asian restaurant mentioned in the article would hold constant temps without the annoying recycling -- and believe me, I find the on/off business just as annoying as you find it.
I look forward to a time when I have the room for a full-sized induction cooktop. I think that with a decent induction disk (I think I'll just buy a 3/32" disc of mild steel and avoid the laminated units sold commercially, or even just repurpose a crepe pan) I'll be able to do things like Spanish eggs, where just a portion of the pan must be kept heated.
One thing I've found is that egg pans (small saute pans) with just the right slope for flipping eggs are not easy to find in induction-compatible pans. But I did find one pretty close to perfect, and an induction disc will take allow reuse of my favorite non-induction egg pan.
I'm really sold on induction. It's not best for everything, but I can live with its shortcomings while enjoying its advantages.
It doesn't really matter much as I mainly linked it as an example, but I experimented a bit with the countries and the specific model isn't on the UK site either (they have other ones with knobs there though). If you want to see the one I linked you can choose "Germany" in the "Choose your Country" page and click "Hausgeräte" (top left) followed by "Standherde" and "Standherde" again (what a weird navigation). In the filters select "Kochfeldart > Induktion". It was the first result left.
I haven't actually seen a stove in the stores that are touch only.
Though, as a student, if I lived in an apartment with a gas hob I don't know if I would have bought a portable induction unit to replace it.
To me, induction with physical knobs and buttons would be the best. Other than the stupid touch things, induction is just so much better than gas for almost anything.
Fortunately we found one with knobs. https://www.aeg.co.uk/kitchen/cooking/cookers/electric-cooke...
It does have auto off on spills, but it's not overly sensitive and only triggers if you really let things boil over. Had it 9 months, can highly recommend this cooker.
That leads to touch controls with all the listed drawbacks, but it's nonetheless what has gained the most support.
For most i suspect the aesthetics of one clean flat surface wins out over alternatives, even though these alternatives are more usable for cooking.
That said, it is not necessarily exclusive, we can have a nice flat surface along with a panel with physical knobs on the side. Even with a minimalist look à la Dieter Rams if needed.
https://www.mieleusa.com/e/30-inch-range-hr-1622-3-i-clean-t...
https://www.gaggenau.com/global/appliances/cooktops/400-seri...
For those who haven't experienced that particular abomination, they had sliding quadrant doors and separate buttons for locking and unlocking the doors as opening and closing the door. Originally the colour of the lights around the buttons was the only clue to the state of the lock (I think these have been redesigned). This resulted in the unintended comedy of someone sat down to do the toilet as the next person came along, pressed the door open button and slowly unveiled the person doing their business to the whole carriage of people. Inevitably resulting in a mashing of buttons from both sides trying to get the door to close again.
UI is typical: buttons to set "heat" and "temp", plus on/off and timer. Good part is than buttons activate mechanical momentary contact switches that have a really solid "clicky" feel.
Overall it's a real pleasure to use, but it has its quirks. The biggest "issue" (not really a gigantic flaw) is the ambiguous controls re: heat and temp. Nominally the heat setting controls wattage, temp supposedly sets limits on temp erature of food. It's just very inconsistent, like setting temp to 160 degrees F doesn't have much to do with actual temperature as measured with a thermometer. But I've gotten used to how it works and very rarely overcook or burn stuff.
In the past I preferred gas, but that's not my first choice now.
It's the same as the gas stoves of my childhood; I'm not sure how it could be simpler. It even has the icons indicating which knob is for which burner. Is your stove postmodern?
We should not accept any health claims without quantification. "Objectively bad for your health" is not particularly relevant, even if I accept that at face value. For example, in right-hand-drive countries, making left turns is "objectively worse" for your health than making right turns.
^ This is based on a vague memory of a lecture on Risk Communication from Prof David Spiegelhalter around 10 years ago.
The way to stay alive is to reduce a little here and a little there (unless you work as an amatuer bomb technician). Heart disease is a leading cause of death; a 25% improvement would be great. There's not any real relationship between "a bacon sandwich everyday" and "the odd bacon sandwich"; where does anyone talk about the latter?
And sorry, I watched the first 30 seconds of that YouTube video and don't see any reason why I'd trust it any more than the times article.
Joking aside, I'm glad he is making these videos in that case. However, I'd say the target audience is teenagers so maybe it's not the best suited for this forum?
There's this weird generational gap on HN where HNers seem to think the generation born in 2000 are teenagers. They're not. They're 22 year olds.
there is no such thing as "objectively bad". Risk is always measured in relative amounts vs something else.
The way you would know this to be true is when professional kitchens are defaulting to induction instead of gas. (I think this has started to happen in a few high end places, which is exciting)
I am putting in a new kitchen soon and it will have a gas hob + electric oven because I love cooking and gas is my default. Every electric hob I have ever used has been garbage, and I am not dropping 2 grand to try induction and maybe discover what sound like familiar issues (ha, I am turning myself off now).
Gas always just works. Apply steady heat - perfect cooking experience. Maybe next time.
I am comfortable with the latter at least, as my default would be a 5 ring gas hob! I cannot imagine cooking with fewer than 3 rings. (Say, duck breast, mash, veg is a pretty basic meal)
> Get a standalone induction plate. They're cheap and portable and they let you try it out without a huge expense.
That is actually a good shout, and not something I had considered. Am currently "camping" kitchen'd in the utility room with a microwave and a 2 ring camping gas stove. Will have a gander, Thanks :)
You're allowed to own more than one standalone induction plate. And you're also allowed to position them freely over your work area :)
That's the first time I've heard of that. Is that for kitchens only, or for all rooms?
That is not how you would know that. There are plenty of industries where people stick to the "tried and true" (for various reasons, some of which might even be reasonable) and chose to neglect efficiency gains or long term health of either their employees or customers.
If A then B true
If and only If A then B true
Side note. The high end ones move first as they discover something better. See the proliferation of technological machines in modern professional kitchens. But the trend gets set and the upper mid range starts to follow and then it will be what chefs want to use because it is best.
But people with electric cooking devices can still have high pollutant levels without proper ventilation.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/residential-cooki...
It's slower, less flexible, makes some styles of sauce making impossible, and probably worst of all - invisible.
Has there been some quantum leap in induction cooking I haven't experienced?
They actually said,
“For children who live in a home with a gas stove, the increased risk of asthma is on par with living in a home with a smoker,” she said.
Every kitchen I’ve ever been in with a gas stove has some sort of ventilation. Open window, fan, hood, etc.
Same for the environment. Let’s look at older style electric coil resistant heat elements. Largely inefficient and the power generated how?
This is mostly propaganda. The
Oh. And more than half of published studies that are used to approve drugs cant be replicated. Oops ?
> doctors are educated by sales reps ...
That statement goes to the heart of it: "doctors" aren't educated by sales reps, different doctors are and to different degrees. You can trust different doctors to different degrees, and there is a very wide range - some are highly trustworthy, some the opposite. And you never know for sure and all you can do is observe and apply your best judgment. That's true for everyone, including Moms.
One thing I can observe is that doctors obtain MDs, and I've rarely encountered doctors who didn't have deep expertise in medicine, and I know some about how much study is done at medical schools. I can't be absolutely sure, but that's a strong signal that they know far more than I do.
Saying 'you can't trust anyone' is as serious and reasonable as saying 'you can trust everyone'. The world just isn't that simple, but finding who to trust is almost the most important skill.
Politicians and their media lackeys in the media need to stop trying to micro-manage peoples' lives.
(A) "Healthy, home-cooked Food" >> "whatever stove type"
(B) "induction stoves" > "gas stoves"
The entire world, in general, aspires to rapidly move away from hydrocarbons. To me, that consideration alone would justify the inequality in (B) when you can afford the choice. Other considerations are a nice bonus.
We're already seeing this play out with municipal regulations deemphasizing gas stoves in new construction.
- people with gas stoves need to know the risks to mitigate them. Like paying attention to ventilation, or really ventilate as soon as they put on the stove. All the more so if they don’t have the means or the right to replace their stoves: they’re probably also more vulnerable to health related fees.
- there has been so much advertisement of gas as “fine” that it needs a lot if counterbalance. People are still buying gas stove for new homes for bullshit reasons.
My induction hob can be connected to 1 phase or 3 phase power, there's a dip switch on the back to switch it over. I'd imagine inside it changes the voltage and frequency to something completely different depending on what power level you set the burner to, so the actual supply voltage isn't that important.
A separate oven and hob usually means the oven isn't at knee height, which is much nicer. Decent apartments and houses in Europe have this, but so does my relative's million dollar house in the US.
dunno about the US but in india we use these. converted to US$, its like $18. they last about 2-5 years with good usage and if you are really unlucky with your spillovers and frayed cables, maybe less but other than that these things are reliable as fuck..
why do you have to buy thousands of dollars worth of equipment?
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/bosch-800-series-4-6-cu-ft-self...
https://jacksonlab.stanford.edu/publication/methane-and-nox-...
It has had a range hood with a fan... and zero ductwork. The fan pulls up from under the hood, and blows it straight into my face, out the top of the hood.
I would believe they remove particulates and odors, and that’s about it.
A consumer organisation here studied "rangehoods" and (if memory serves) they found them all to close to useless.
consumer.org.nz - the reports are paywalled and I no longer subscribe, so mēh!
Even on the highest settings, I've never seen one that even makes a dent, or moves the column at all. They're snake oil and fashion, nothing more. And that's before talking about the ones that don't have any ductwork, and just blow it back out into the room.
Commercial-grade ones that move ridiculous quantities of air definitely work, and a tiny tiny handful of people have these in their homes. The rest have essentially nothing.
Also this isn't biased by "I don't cook". Quite the contrary :)
Is it saturated fats or something? Burgers are definitely a rarity for me, but I cook plenty. It's just generally lean meat and veg/oil/etc.
Right under the fan. Yes, they are useless.
The remote eats a pair of CR2450 cells every three months, so that could have been done better.
Almost nobody in New York City (where the NYT is based and focuses its coverage) has a vent hood that vents outside the apartment.
Older buildings don't have a hood at all, and new buildings have hoods which circulate air within the apartment, which doesn't really address concerns about accumulation of environmental pollutants.
Thanks. If this bit of context was clear from the get go it would have been a lot easier for those from EUR where we would expect vents outside the apartment to be the norm. ( Not speaking for all EUR, so there may be places this is not the norm )
As a matter of fact this is the first time I hear about vent circulating within the apartment, and to be honest this sounds quite scary.
It is the norm in newer buildings, but there are plenty of older houses or flats blocks in the EU that don’t have a good ventilation system. It’s similarly expensive same in the UK and I cannot say about Norway and Switzerland, but I would think that it is not better in the other non-EU bits of Europe.
This is the problem with most homes that have vent hoods. I’ve yet to be in a home that has a make up air fan.
I live in a rental right now that doesn’t even have a vent. I just open the door and a window and hope that’s sufficient. (But it really isn’t)
Otherwise you might opt for an electric tankless water heater, a heat pump HVAC system, and just an electric dryer.
I've read that the gas industry uses the cooking specifically in advertising and lobying to keep this toehold for the even bigger emissions. [1]
And 2-3% isn't nothing either. Such an easy win. we desperately need to rack up easy points yesterday...
Relatively as in compared to say utility scale production/storage or hell even replacing home heating like you mention.
I wish we could replace our 110 year old giant cast iron steam heater thing. Would have to either replace all the radiators with electric board things (i hate them) or find an electric boiler (which would have to plasma cut apart the old boiler to get it out lol).
Heat pumps sound cool too but all those options have upfront costs which some of my hoa neighbors can't afford. We couldn't get a loan for other repairs we did with longer term than 3 years.
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/06/how-the-foss...
I do wonder if there's a reasonable heat pump retrofit for old buildings with boiler-based heating. Ultimately you're just heating up a liquid and pumping it through everyone's radiator, right? Seems like a sensible product given the number of old buildings with this kind of heating.
Edit: And here it is! https://electrek.co/2022/01/05/these-new-affordable-electric...
I wanted to get an electric car. But not only do my neighbors not want to split cost of a charger station but also I'd have to pay over 10k to upgrade/fix the electricity - or so I was told.
It seems like it could be even simpler than a heat exchange that I think puts pipes into the ground?
Like it's just creating steam. Can't we just scale up an electric tea kettle? Seems like it would be pretty efficient.
Electricity is overall more plugable, versatile and evolvable than appliances that directly consume hydrocarbons. You can meet your source needs using some combination of grid connection, solar, backup generator, backup batteries, etc... - and you can evolve this source side of things over time without being forced to constantly retrofit the load-side systems in your house.
There's no such thing as zero-impact. Wind farms have an environmental impact. Building solar-sensitive cells require dirty processes that also create pollution and waste as they don't last forever.
The important part to remember is that natural gas infrastructure is always polluting, and tends to leak a fair amount of fuel which is never even used (around me, there are estimated that this is as high as a third of the total usage). That’s all locked in when you use gas, whereas an electric stove can be powered by a mix of sources which change hourly without the owner even having to know about it.
The other thing to consider is that a professionally-managed and monitored power plant is usually better than equipment as maintained by the average person. Lots of people don’t even get their gas appliances checked once a year on average, and you’ll pretty regularly hear about leaks or fires caused by poor maintenance at apartment buildings where you’d think they’d be at least a little more responsible.
Efficiency wise you may be wrong. Carrying electricity is not efficient (you lose energy with distance) while gas (as long as leaks are limited) is a more efficient store of energy from start to end.
Often, a necessary part of solutions are 1% here and 1% there. There's not always big, satisfying chunks, or they aren't sufficient.
It asserts that cooking with gas "has been shown to be catastrophic for the environment." What's the basis for this assertion? They link to another NYT article that cites a study that says, "annual methane emissions from all gas stoves in U.S. homes have a climate impact comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 500,000 cars." [1]
That might sound like a lot until you realize there are 280 million cars in the U.S. In other words, the total impact of all gas stoves in U.S. homes is equal to 0.18% that of cars.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency-c...
> The main discrepancy with these figures is caused when one doesn't take into account that electricity first needs to be produced in power plants which sometimes convert less than a third of the primary energy into electricity
That is, induction stoves are about 90% efficient at converting electricity to useful heat, but your electricity generation may not be depending on where you live. It's the same argument people make against electric cars and heat pumps.
As the grid decarbonises, electric cooking will become far more favourable than combustion cooking in terms of CO2 until eventually, hopefully, it is entirely zero emission.
Indeed the article doesn't seem to focus on what could have been its strongest argument: wood/biomass already IS carbon neutral, provided it's sustainably farmed. That does, however, exclude the fossil fuels used in production and distribution which may be significant or zero depending on source, but are usually quite low, albeit human resource intensive. If you want to go one layer deep you should aggregate up the carbon output of all the labour going into the production system but I digress.
Thermal efficiency only matters if you consider the carbon intensity of the source of the energy.
Besides, the major problem with combustion cooking is the particulates anyway, which are immensely better on an electric stove. And the article seems to consider convenience as an irrelevance rather than the primary motivating factor of essentially all technological development.
An efficient rocket stove outperforms induction if you take account externalities, which is the right thing to do if you are environmentally minded.
The lack of a PhD doesn't make someone "not a scientist". Science is what one does, not what one is.
I have a doctorate from Oxford, but I'm less of a scientist now than I was as an undergraduate student.
yes but someone who has a MBA is definitely NOT a scientist but a salesman.
People’s lives take them down many paths. I am a “scientist” insofar as I have done science - and am an author on two publications in a respected journal (Annals of Botany). The research from my MS in Biology continues to get cited in evolutionary biology and population genetics studies years later. I also have an MBA and am a senior sales leader in a cybersecurity scale up (at some point years ago I decided I wanted to make more money than academia could provide and I made a major pivot). I’m still equally comfortable discussing herkogamy and phenotypic integration as I am GTM strategy and compensation models.
MBA graduates are by far used in companies in the Marketing and Sales departments, so interpreting my comment about them being salesmen as "hate on MBAs" is quite funny, because that's precisely how the hiring market sees them.
Sure, there are scientists who happen to also have MBAs. That's a huge exception, so you won't win points by finding someone who happens to have that profile. MBAs should typically not be trusted to talk about Science because:
- unless they happen to have a multiple education background, they have NEVER been exposed to serious science and the scientific method. Blame it on the fact that Science outside of higher studies is badly taught if you'd like.
- their education is mostly about how to understand the market and optimize how to exploit it through market research, targeting, and marketing.
The second point makes them suspicious from the get go on any topic they touch publicly. Are they acting as naive actors trying to debate or advance one's understand of the subject, or acting as MBAs trying to push a specific agenda for other reasons?
Like other communities, sadly, HN is egocentric, thinking what they do is important and that everything else - humanities, social sciences, arts, management, government, etc. - is a waste. The world should be run by hackers, of course. I would guess MBA News is similar.
Isn’t it possible, a sales person is aware of something better than someone having an educational degree over it, esp when selling?
I know this because it doesn't happen when I'm boiling.
Sorry, couldn’t resist
The rest of the odor molecule is hyrdrogen, carbon, and oxygen, so likely goes to water and carbon dioxide or monoxide.
These effects are cumulative, it's not some threshold you cross where the other negatives are no longer relevant because you do something far worse.
It's like people who rationalize eating a pint of ice cream before bed because they had mcdonalds and a beer for lunch already. The appropriate action would be to skip dinner and dessert altogether, but they're doing the opposite due to such wrongheaded thinking.
You should really be thinking "hey, my cooking produces a lot of particulates, I wonder if I can clean up the process elsewhere at least"
How about not cooking animal products, i save more emmissions that way than spending $2k on an appliance that will be obsolete or irreparable in 5~6 years.
If you want to make certain forms of energy "illegal" because of some "lung-irritating pollutants", I mean why not start with the unsustainability and cancer risks of these poly type chemicals, no? Especially ones coming in direct contact with your food, and your water supply (a.k.a Dish Washing?)? Never mind the actual environmental damage of manufacturing chemicals like these?
This is a fallacy. Regulations can be improved even without being perfect and your pet peeve not being addressed in a specific discussion does not make the discussion useless. Gas is harmful, as well as some antiadhesive coatings. Saying we should not do anything about either because the other would still be bad is not particularly smart. It is also the contorted logic that lobby groups use when they know they are on the wrong side of a public health issue.
I didn't say we shouldn't do anything about either, but banning natural gases that are found in nature because of "lung-irritating pollutants" is not particularly smart. I'm not in any lobby groups. I care about freedom and energy independence. Some NYT article pushing an agenda of "all electric" and climate change is contorted logic.
Put all of your trust in some on-grid electric power utility company where in some cases are not stable(cough cough PG&E), all the while power grids are huge targets for foreign "attacks", and even a solar EMP (Nuclear bomb? Solar flare?) could render all electronics useless. All the while, you make cooking with natural gas illegal? I suppose at that point, we could rub sticks together and cook by a wood fire (since the dawn of Man)? Or that is illegal now too?
Uh...Yea, no thanks.
What are normal people suppose to do without expertise on any subject.
Not against induction cooking but It is very common for these type of reporting that for induction cooking to succeed they must get rid of every single gas stove. And make gas stove cooking as evil. Start a movement, conjure a trend, make hype.
What has changed?
I am getting one when I get a new stove, but then again I do not have reticulated gas here.
My mother had one and it was great
This is unfortunately just how the world is. Epistemology is hard, and there are a ton of people out there who make it harder (Three guesses as to whether the author of this article, or any other crappy prestige-publication journalist, thinks they're lying).
It's a scary and confusing world! At some level you just have to internalize that, build the most accurate model that's worth the overhead, and accept that you'll be wrong a lot.
The industries (merchants of doubt) are so active, it's absolutely nontrivial for a well meaning layman not wanting to invest oddles of time to get to good conclusions.
The smoking point is not a problem, the nasty stuff start appearing as couple dozen degrees _above_ the smoking point, so you can use that as an early warning system.
It also contains antioxidants, which bind some of the nasty stuff for a while, so it really is better for you for regular cooking.
Could not disagree more. Olive oil will be spewing smoke and changing flavour well before you get to a sensible temperature for shallow or stir frying. It is very tasty and apparently quite good for you, so it's a great choice for low-temperature cooking, but anywhere smoking point is important, olive oil is not what you're looking for.
Yes, really. I personally love the aesthetics of flames on the stove, and this might lead me to choose a gas stove over the alternatives despite minor downsides like being slower to bring water to a boil. On the other hand, the air quality issue seems like a much more significant downside, though I haven’t researched it much. (I haven’t personally ever had the opportunity to choose the type of stove for a place I’ll be living, so it hasn’t come up. Someday.)
I know a lot of older Greeks/Italians are the same way with their gas ovens. There's just something magical about it that turns your time in the kitchen from a chore into something you look forward to.
Metal slats are also nicer to hit your a pan against than flat glass for a variety of useful/sensual reasons.
Doing a super low temp simmer on gas is hard. Double boilers are only something you need with gas. Induction imho and experience is just better all around. What the video for someone putting it far more eloquently then I ever could.
Or how about my 11" cast iron; the induction only heats the middle 7". Half the pan is useless.
As for your cast iron maybe use the correctly sized induction element then? It’s cast iron and it doesn’t spread heat well, that’s how it works. You would have the same issue on a resistive element.
They make induction cooktops for woks (they are basically slightly bowl shaped), I’m not sure how popular they are in Asia, however.
Ikea has the 36" in stock in the US for 950USD, but the 30" would be tolerable at 800 or 700USD if they were available.
The side burner of a $150 grill does a fine job, but can't find a wider-diameter induction.
In a home context its irrelevant. You're not doing true wok cooking at home anyway, your piddly little small bore home gas feed won't be providing anywhere near the required intensity.
As I said watch the video it says it better then I
No.
1. Instant heat off/heat on response. In electric stoves the cook top still remains fairly hot and cooking can happen from residual heat after you turn off the heat. Same issue with turning the heat on. While the gas stove has minimum hearing from the thermal mass after you turn it off
2. Psudeo-grilling ability
3. Cost for gas vs. electricity. In an ideal world the heat output per $ would be exactly the same but there are subsidies, pricing structures, different supporting infrastructure etc.
As the article implies, at the current price point, gas stoves are competing with electric stoves rather than induction stoves. And there are definitely a few benefits.
Also I can make smores when I don't feel like getting a fire going.
I do have an induction plug in hot plate and for actually cooking its really quite good. It boils water faster than all but my 21k btu burner on just 110v, dumps no heat into the room, cools down when I lower the temp as fast as gas, and did I mention it dumps no heat into the room?
As far as air quality taking anything above boiling temperatures inside is super bad for your lungs no matter how you do it. The NO isn't nearly as bad as the particulates created by searing or frying.
But many things that cause electricity to go out (floods, earthquakes... Russian invasion) will put out the gas too
I know it does happen but because the lines are buried it’s at least 2 orders of magnitude less likely.
Gas is obviously far more resilient, though not immune to more extreme problems. I’ve literally never experienced a gas outage, yet power outages are routine almost everywhere I’ve lived.
IME, this is objectively false. I've lived in the Northeast my entire life (40+ years). We have on average 2-3 power failures lasting more than a few seconds per year. I have never in my life experienced a natural gas system failure. The pumps that pressurize the gas are themselves powered by gas, and the delivery is not in any way dependent on the power grid; also, as someone else stated, gas lines are buried well underground.
A generator is a small investment to fix this and many other problems, without causing indoor air pollution.
the NYT has always been agenda driven. even for the iraq war they were spreading the WMD bullshit to lead the US into war.
"I have a PhD and I know better" is not a compelling argument.
It's weird that they use their immunologist credentials to specifically attack it being worse than second hand smoke (which doesn't seem particularly controversial) as it seems very commonly accepted that it's bad, which you'd think an immunologist would know. Like if you look up any asthma charity for advice on your child's asthma, they're going to have this in the list of avoidable triggers. Why such venom because a reporter has (though probably hasn't) mildly exaggerated a real threat?
https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resource...
> Anything that burns inside the house will create smoke that can damage your lungs. There are many things you can do to help protect you and your family’s health from air pollution inside your home:
> Use the cleanest burning fuel you can find and afford. Electricity is the cleanest and does not create any household air pollution
I'd previously seen reports on the studies about gas stoves being harmful even when off, and wondered about the credibility.
Not for many decades surely. I'm 66 and I haven't used a gas stove that had a pilot light for at least forty years, all have had piezo-electric or mains electric ignition. But then again, I live in Norway now and formerly England not the US.
Why do you think you need a PhD to be a scientist? Many famous scientists, even some distinguished professors, don’t have a PhD. A PhD isn’t even the only type of doctorate!
Examples? I'm really not aware of anyone, so I'm curious.
Professor however, no, except as a honorary title.
I know exactly zero tenured professors who do not have a PhD.
My dilemma as I catch more and more propaganda: should we support it as it is our side or should we try to expose it as it is not true?
I'd still rather not breathe any harmful agents at all though, when better tech exists.
As a scientist (an immunologist) who leads a research lab on lung inflammation including asthma, the cavalier attitude Times columnists have toward scientific references in their articles is appalling.
RMI is a thinktank with an agenda. Not a research institution. And Brady Seals is not a scientist. Note the lack of PhD. She has an MBA and has never worked in science. Nor did she 'author a study'. She authored a REPORT. Which is not peer-reviewed and not published in a reputable journal.
As an immunologist I assure you that scientific evidence does not indicate that 'increase of asthma is on par with living in a home with a smoker'.
And frankly- just walking outdoors in NYC you're exposed to far higher levels of lung-irritating pollutants than you are cooking stir fry on your stove. But that doesn't fit the agenda the Times is pushing with multiple induction stove articles lately all focused on bogus health effects and the (more legitimate) climate concerns.
https://nyti.ms/3i1tj3B#permid=117337268