Switch Out Your Cookware

Excerpted from Radical Metabolism by Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., C.N.S. The way you go about preparing and storing your food is every bit as important as the food quality itself. Heavy metals, plastics chemicals, the debilitating effects of microwaves,and numerous other kitchen menaces are just poised to poison your health and weight loss efforts. If you ignore the quality of your cooking equipment, you are raising your risk for big-time contamination. Think about it… you have decided to use your precious time and energy toward transforming your health with nutrition. The last thing you need is to unwittingly contaminate your otherwise carefully prepared, oh-so-healthy foods! There’s a lot of nonreactive, inert cookware on the market today. My all-time favorite is clay. Clay-based ceramics and earthenware are heavy metal–free, without synthetic polymers that can negatively affect taste and food quality. Clay radiates far infrared heat that is actually
beneficial to cooking, according to my friend Rebecca Wood, an award-winning chef and health consultant. Wood told me about a full line of freezer-to-oven ceramic pots,pans, and bakeware from the Xtrema company. This healthy cookware line—and others like it—allows for a culinary experience of delicate and delicious flavors. Many other types of cookware contain heavy metals and toxic chemicals that can leach into your food during cooking or storage. The primary culprits are pots and pans and containers made from aluminum—but poisons may also be lurking in other unexpected places. This is why I decided the kitchen deserved a chapter of its own. Some kitchens need only a modest upgrade, but others scream for radical retooling! If you’re still cooking or storing your food in unhealthy pots and pans
or wrapping them up in aluminum foil, you can “re-pollute” yourself and undermine your diligent detox efforts. Do you recall what happens to your body with increased toxic load? Those noxious compounds eventually get stuck in your bile and sabotage your best fat-metabolizing and slimming efforts.