6 ways your kitchen utensils and appliances are making you sick

Did you know that cooking on a peeling non-stick tava could lead to gastrointestinal problems?

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Before you question the dismal levels of cleanliness at cafes and restaurants for your flailing health, take a look inside your own kitchen first. From your pans and kettles to your mugs and coffee makers, here's how your kitchen utensils are making you sick.

Chipping melamine dishware

Melamine dishware is unbreakable, but it can chip if you expose them to high temperatures. When you use melamine to store hot foods or heat foods in them, the melamine can leach from dishes to your food. In high concentration, melamine contamination can put you at a risk of kidney stones and renal failure [1]. The risk of melamine seeping into the food is low if you're not using it to heat food.

Peeling non-stick tava or griddle

Most people believe that cooking in non-stick cookware can help them cut down on consumption of oil. While this is true to some extent, extensive use of non-stick cookware can have a dangerous side to it. Constant usage can erode the coating, that can make the chemicals mix with your food. The non-stick surface is made of carcinogenic substances that could sweep into your food and cause liver or gastrointestinal problems [2]. So when you notice scratches on your pan, it is time to discard it.

Stained cups or mugs

Are you too lazy to remove stains from your tea cup? You may assume that the brown rings around the top of your cup aren t that harmful. Hard water used to clean the mug has a high concentration of dissolved calcium carbonate which readily forms bonds with the tannins in the tea that gets deposited on the inside of the mugs. Drinking tea in such cups can lead to irregular bowel movement [3]. The best way to get rid of tea stains is to mix vinegar and baking soda and use it for removing the stains.

Browned utensils

The browning that you see on old utensils used for cooking consist of food leftovers. The reason you see it more often on metals like aluminium is that these are harder to clean. Such utensils breed bacteria. It gets tougher to wash foods that have been sitting in a dish for 12 hours. So clean your dishes as soon as possible.

Coffee makers

Did you know that coffee makers are more germ-laden than door handles? Coffee makers have yeast and mould growing in their reservoirs. Researchers have found that 1 in 10 machines used at homes in the US also has coliform bacteria growing in them [4]. Read up on how vending machine coffee may be bad for you.

Used chopping board

Are you slicing raw chicken and then veggies in the same cutting board? Don't do it as the germs from uncooked meat can get into whatever you are cutting next. In fact, the bacteria can double up after 10 minutes of use no matter what you are cutting [5]. So make sure you never use a chopping board which is not clean. Here are some time-saving cleaning hacks.

References:

[1] Gossner, C. M.-E., Schlundt, J., Ben Embarek, P., Hird, S., Lo-Fo-Wong, D., Beltran, J. J. O., Tritscher, A. (2009). The Melamine Incident: Implications for International Food and Feed Safety. Environmental Health Perspectives,117(12), 1803 1808.

[2] Domingo, J. L. (2012). Health risks of dietary exposure to perfluorinated compounds. Environment international, 40, 187-195.

[3] Sengupta, P. (2013). Potential Health Impacts of Hard Water. International Journal of Preventive Medicine, 4(8), 866 875.

[4] Christina Vilanova, Alba Iglesius, The coffee-machine bacteriome: biodiversity and colonisation of the wasted coffee tray leach, Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 17163 (2015) doi:10.1038/srep17163

[5] Cliver DO. Cutting boards in Salmonella cross-contamination. J AOAC Int. 2006 Mar-Apr;89(2):538-42. Review. PubMed PMID: 16640304.

Image source: Getty Images

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