How Food Cooked In Different Metals Impact Your Health

The culinary diversity of India is familiar to everyone; however, the diversity of the various kitchen utensils' material is less talked upon. Ayurveda gives a lot more importance to the metals used for cooking the daily Indian food and despite various innovations in modern cooking, the old-school cooking utensils are known to be the best. While some metals have a positive impact on health, others come across to you as harmful metals in which the food is cooked. Nonstick, aluminium, and even copper cookware have become an alarming concern because of their tendency to leave trace deposits of chemicals and metals in food.

Here are a list of copper ware items you should consider using for your daily life!

Copper 

Copper, having anti-bacterial properties is known to be the best cooking metal for rice. For the same reason, it is said that drinking water in a copper vessel is known to have medicinal properties.It is also known to heal wounds and works as anti-ageing agent. It comes as no surprise  that copper can detoxify your body and increase hemoglobin. It might be a popular metal used for cooking, but beware of cooking or eating anything acidic as this may impact the taste of the food.

Aluminium

aluminium utensils

Aluminum cookware is very popular amongst most Indian households. Nonstick, scratch-resistant anodised aluminium cookware is always good choice. The hard surface is easy to clean. Uncoated aluminum cookware is a greater risk. This type of cookware can easily melt and can cause burns if it gets too hot. Still, research has shown that the amount of aluminium this cookware leaches into food is considerably small Aluminium heats very quickly and reacts easily with acidic vegetables and foods, so it is advisable to avoid cooking in such utensils. These chemical reactions affect your immune system.

Stainless steel

Stainless steel

It is known to be the ideal metal for cooking any kind of food because of its non-reactive properties. Eating or drinking in this metal is considered to have a safe impact on your health. It’s a metal alloy made of chromium, nickel, carbon and silicon and has aluminium or copper coating at the bottom for heating purposes. Most stainless steel cookware has copper or aluminium bottoms for even heating hence reducing health problems.

 Ceramic

Ceramic

Many people who want to lead a healthy lifestyle are on a quest to find out what is the safest cookware to use. While so many options contain dangerous metals and chemicals and can add unwanted flavors to your food, ceramic cookware has proven over and over again that it is a safe, healthy. It does not contain any harmful chemicals and hence avoids the risk of the chemicals getting mixed with the food. Cooking food in ceramic cookware might take longer than any other metal as it takes time to heat up, but the taste and quality of the food is on a different level.

 Brass

Brass

Brass is still commonly used in small towns and villages in India. “Water stored in a brass vessel increases strength and immunity.” it will not change the qualities of the material that is placed in the container.”Traditionally Brass utensils were used in India to cook non acidic food - Dals, Rice and Mutton. Even today a lot of Biryani Centres use large brass Handis to make Biryani.  it is best used for non acidic foods and at medium temperatures, ideal for slow cooking over long period. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc.humans need trace amounts of zinc to be healthy, larger amounts such as one would get from frequent and prolonged use of zinc cookware becomes toxic.

Purchasing cookware can feel overwhelming, so it’s important to do your research and determine what’s important to you when choosing these utensils.