Lead Free Glaze Slow Cooker
Is Your Crock Pot Safe? (My Switch To A Lead-Free Slow Cooker)
"You use a conventional crock pot?!" my friend gasped with disbelief, interrupting the high horse I was probably on talking about the amount of bone broth my husband and I consume, and how he craves it and asks for it, and isn't he just GREAT?!
"You're consuming that much bone broth from a ceramic crock pot?!" she reiterated.
"Well… yeah? The old silver and black one I've always used… WHY?!"
"Tiffany, I can't believe you of all people don't know about this. Those regular ceramic crock pots leech lead into your food!"
"Well isn't that what you're using?" (We had been cooking and I swore I had seen a regular crock pot on her counter, not that my response addressed the issue at hand whatsoever.)
"No - mine is clay ." She then proceeded to show me the lovely clay bowl inside her definitely superior slow cooker while explaining how lead leeches into food using the conventional crock pot.
I was sold (and a little ashamed for not knowing sooner). Thank goodness for smart friends.
Is there lead in your crock pot?
At this point, you're probably eyeballing your own crock pot over there on the counter and wondering, "Is MY crock pot dangerous?! Or is it crock pots of OTHER people that are dangerous?!"
It's ok, denial is a first step.
Here's how to know if YOUR slow cooker could be potentially toxic…
Is it a conventional ceramic bowl? It probably leeches lead.
Did you buy it from Target or Wal-Mart for its cheap price? It probably leeches lead.
Or did you find it at Goodwill and feel like an unstoppable thrifting machine in that moment? It's probably a toxic lead leecher.
Did your grandma give it to you once upon a time? It's probably making your food toxic. Don't be mad at Grandma, though, it's us new age Internet women who have to find these things out and save the future generations degeneration via slow cooked chili!!! (Breathe, Tiffany…)
Suffice it to say, if you have never intentionally sought out a lead-free crock pot, then you could be getting small amounts of lead leeched into your food.
But we can't be sure. Many companies now claim to use lead-free glazes in their products, and Crock-Pot is one such company. So in that case, it would depend on the age of your Crock-Pot.
How in the world does a slow cooker leech lead into food?
Here is how this works, for the sake of knowing and being the smart friend who comes to your conventional-crock-put-using friends rescue. Bless their uninformed souls.
Kidding.
You need to know because lead is some scary stuff and NO level of it is safe in the body.
"Two examples of severe cases: A California family suffered acute lead poisoning from drinking orange juice stored in a pitcher bought in Mexico, and a Seattle couple were similarly afflicted from the use of terra cotta mugs acquired in Italy."
It's all about the glaze.
All ceramic ware is glazed before it gets put into the kiln.
Some glazes contain amounts of cadmium and lead, which gives the finished piece a nice shiny appearance.
This is the lead that can leech into your food.
Acidic foods and liquids make this even more likely, for example— apple cider vinegar when making bone broth(!) and coffee drank from lovely pottery mugs. Yes, ALL earthenware carries this risk if the shiny lead glaze is used.
So watch out for shiny glazes!
You, the consumer, can always tell if toxic glazes are being used because the finished piece will have the aforementioned shine to it.
But wait! Some reports claim that it's unglazed ceramics which are dangerous…
This confused me when I was first reading about all of this lead leeching.
First I thought, "Okay so watch out for shiny ceramics - got it!" Then I read a headline that stated "Unglazed Ceramics May Be Dangerous For Food" …. huh? Those nice dull clay earthy looking pottery mugs I've switched to might ALSO be leeching lead?
What the heck is the answer?!
It turns out that for us pottery lovers, the only real way to be sure is to have lead testing strips on hand to check individual pieces with. Apparently older pieces and pottery bought abroad is more likely to contain lead than that found in big box stores. But that's no fun aesthetically! So I think it's best to have lead testing strips so you can test each piece before using it to cook, serve, or store food.
But back to crock pots…
Switching to a non-toxic lead-free crock pot
Yes, humans have been cooking with clay for hundreds of thousands of years, you'll read this everywhere.
But that statement alone is not an end-all be-all to the problem, as now we understand that lots of earthenware can be problematic when it comes to lead. It depends largely on the glazes and kiln etiquette.
My research really only brought me to one conclusion - cook with clay that has been tested to be lead-free.
The healthiest crock pot and the one sitting over there on my counter now? VitaClay.
You know what I really love? VitaClay doesn't just claim to be safe because… ' clay (duh!)' , they actually show their lab test reports publicly on their website, like this.
Soon I'm going to make a recommended list of lead-free SAFE earthenware in general. Because I don't know about you, but I LOVE the look of rustic pottery and we primarily use pottery in our kitchen.
You don't have to give this up, you just need to know where to source from.
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Lead Free Glaze Slow Cooker
Source: https://washingtonslastfrontier.com/blog/lead-free-slow-cooker
Posted by: paulsenhaterrovat.blogspot.com
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