So it’s mainly asthma that people develop due to exposure to nitrogen oxide - and treating all the patients puts a considerable burden on society.
Unrelatedly, as a side note, I got curious about Portuguese cooking - for some reason the graphs show that cooking food in Portugal requires a three times higher percentage (30% as opposed to 10%) of overall energy consumption, implying either lower energy use for everything else, or higher energy use for cooking.
I wonder if there’s some secret sauce that is only made in Portugal and which is extremely energy-intensive? Or just a case of broken statistics…
Portugal has very low energy consumption per household and it looks like most cooking is done on oil or gas stoves, which are relativly wastefull.
https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-sector/households/household-eu.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_consumption_in_households
Republicans in Washington state put forth a confusing as shit initiative to mandate gas and gas stoves. 4 initiatives this cycle with confusing names like “Prop 2102 for not eatjng babies” but the fine print is youre required to eat babies.
Some bills republicans are spending their legislative energy on: Liberty in Laundry Act, Refrigerator Freedom Act, Stop Unaffordable Laundry Standards (SUDS) Act.
Thanks for posting the link to the supporting paper.
I’m a little skeptical about gas stoves causing or contributing to all these deaths, but I believe in science so if well written papers like the one OP linked are peer reviewed and published then I’m willing to accept their conclusions.
That being said, I’m a very avid home cook (with years of experience in commercial kitchens) and I’ve made many good faith attempts to find a way to cook on the stove top that doesn’t use gas, and unfortunately none of them come even close to what I can do with gas.
Regular electric elements are garbage, and it doesn’t matter what kind of cooking vessel you use, but I think almost everyone agrees here.
Induction is very interesting, and can heat a ferrous vessel quicker than a normal stove burner (but not nearly as fast as my outdoor wok equipment can). Unfortunately it is pulsed heating, and uses a rather course gradient, so techniques which require very fine tuned and consistent heat aren’t easily replicated.
I’ll admit that have a lot of money invested in non-ferrous cooking vessels (copper, not a copper plate in the bottom, legit 3mm thick copper walled pans) and they are incompatible with induction, so any switch to induction will require buying new cookware. I’m in a tiny niche, so I also admit my trouble with induction shouldn’t discourage others from switching.
Gas is wonderful for getting precisely the results I need with sauces, when you turn it down it follows a smooth and predictable gradient, and works perfectly with high quality copper cookware which is superior to anything else on the market (unless of course you use induction, or care about price).
Yes, I have some cast iron and carbon steel, which work with induction, but they don’t lose heat as fast as other materials, which is required for some techniques. They’re great for some things, but terrible at others, so they don’t solve my problem.
I run a hefty hood that exhausts outside, and I don’t have kids in the house, so in the near term I’m not really worried about people in my home getting sick from whatever combusting natural gas throws off.
But like the meat alternative (or lab grown meat) effort, I’m genuinely interested in an alternative to what I already use, but only if it performs at least as well as my current solution. And unfortunately nothing currently on the market comes even close.
How pulse-oriented the heat from your induction stove is varies a lot by stove. The cheaper ones tend to use nothing but pulses for output control; the better ones tend to have the ability to actually lower continuous output. There’s a whole range of combinations out there too, where, say, the first 50% of output cut happens continuously, but it shifts to pulses below that.
I’ll also note that the induction stoves with a thermostat which lets you fry without ever smoking the oil are amazing.
Does anyone know how effective venting via the overhead microwave is vs an actual dedicated range hood?
Depends on whether it vents outside or just blows the fumes back in your face. But generally it will be slightly to much worse than a dedicated range hood. What/how you cook matters a lot - don’t sear ribeyes inside on cast iron without a vent hood.
Thanks. My microwave does vent to the outside of the house. I’ll consider a range hood for the future.
