The French National Assembly on Thursday unanimously adopted a bill aimed at restricting the manufacture and sale of products containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — also known as PFAS or “forever chemicals.” The MPs, backed by the government, voted to exclude kitchen utensils from the scope of the text.
Thanks to an intense lobbying push, manufacturers of frying pans and saucepans — including the SEB group, which owns Tefal — are exempt from this ban under the proposed law penned by French Green MPs.
Majority groups initially tried to delay the ban on kitchen utensils until 2030 — a timetable refused by the French Green MPs who instead suggested an exemption until 2026.
I used to work in food service - I remember one day they replaced all the pans with new ones that had a black Teflon coating… about 6 months later, ALL of the black, except a little bit around the edge, was completely gone. Just bare metal. All of it flaked off into our customers’ food.
Were you scraping them with steel wool or something
In a commercial kitchen? I’d bet good money they were using metal utensils.
Teflon isn’t heat-resistant enough to withstand proper frying temperatures for long and actual chefs are going to do an actual sear. If you want non-stick there’s carbon steel or cast iron (as well as proper technique), if you want stick-and-deglaze (yes that’s a thing) use stainless steel. All three are going to out-live your great-grandchildren.
If you want something acid-resistant use a ceramic or stainless pan: Stuff like tomato sauce is going to strip patina off cast iron or carbon steel. Sure, you can just re-do the patina but it’s going to take some cycles before it’s up to its old non-stick properties again. Those non-stick ceramic pans are basically fancy enamel, when they lose their non-stick properties clean them with oxygen bleach that’s going to strip fatty residues out of the tiny dimples in the coating and they’ll be as good as new. Only way to really damage them is to shatter the coating.
That makes a lot of sense.
A bit odd that a commercial kitchen would buy teflon though considering how fragile it is.
I guess incompetent management is incompetent.
You don’t think some probably came off in the dishwasher?
Even so it still goes into the environment forever, per the name.