Combining cooking with pleasure, health and ecology

By Marane Plaza

Whipping up your favorite dishes in your all-equipped, country-style kitchen could just make you feel like you?re on one of those pages of a high-end culinary-lifestyle magazine. Thanks to Rachael Ray, boasting your talents in cooking has been a lot cuter and lifestylish, if not domesticated and boring. After all, knowing the ABC?s of cooking is always a plus factor, attractive and sexy, right?

Being a culinary savant could be more attractive when you also have the drive and passion in taking care of our environment and our health. It?s been said and taught a thousand times that we should take care of our one and only planet. Our environmental awareness nowadays has grown considerably in the past few years, even international celebrities have shown their efforts to inspire us to do our own contributions in saving Mother Earth. Taking care of our environment has good effects to our health as well. And there?s no way that we can?t bring that certain awareness in our kitchen. Actually, GreenPan has a hundred and one ways of combining the health and ecology with your cooking pleasure.

GreenPan is a young international company that develops and manufactures household products based on three core principles: convenience, health and environment. GreenPan is on a mission to support the intentions that are dealing with the challenges of our modern society. With the intention to market products that allow you to keep your present lifestyle and convenience without losing track of the sustainability, a revolutionary in cooking products called the GreenPan Eco-Friendly Non-Stick Cookware has been recently launched at the Podium. Delectable and irresistible recipes were cooked in a demonstration by chef Nino Laus of In-Yo Restaurant, which introduced ?the new green cooking? technique. The GreenPan newcomer will not only enhance your cooking experience, but can also give you ways to make a valuable contribution to a cleaner world for the generations to come.

GreenPan Eco-Friendly Non-Stick Cookware has made quite a splash in its US debut in 2007. It was completely sold out in its US premier on the Home Shopping Network, selling 24,000 pieces in four hours.

The non-stick surface used in this GreenPan cookware is a ceramic-based nano non-stick ground-breaking coating called Thermolon?the first patented non-stick coating designed with an ecological ethos. This ceramic coating has a heat resistance of up to 450 degrees Celsius, and does not emit any toxic fumes as high temperatures. Because of Thermolon, less energy is being used which contributes to a 60-percent decrease in CO2 emissions in comparison with conventional non-stick cookware. The extreme heat resistance of Thermolon non-stick technology enables saut?ing and frying at very high temperatures. Searing becomes a pleasure, even flamb?ing is no longer a problem. Plus, its properties make the surface scratch-resistant, which makes it very easy to clean.

Several parameters are carefully considered during the development process of GreenPan products. Every GreenPan product needs to fulfill a number of strict requirements in terms of quality, design, and of course, eco-friendliness. GreenPan uses solely non-toxic raw materials which are recyclable or even biodegradable. GreenPan tries to avoid techniques that create hybrid components that are difficult to separate during the recycling process. The handles are produced universally and this requires fewer tooling. This encourages the consumers to recycle or even reuse product components. This way, products can be easily repaired or components are given a second life.

There have been other non-stick cookware on the market before, but what makes GreenPan different is that it does not use Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), the chemical name for Dupont?s Teflon non-stick material; and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a chemical used in the manufacturing of traditional Teflon-based non-stick coatings. That is, free of PTFE and PFOA. PFOA is hazardous for both our health and environment.

The use of PTFE and PFOA has been a talking point for quite some time in the USA. For the production of this PTFE layer of other cookware, PFOA is used as a necessary process agent. This kind of layer starts to decompose when the cookware reaches a temperature of 260 degrees Celsius. The overheating of PTFE results into the decomposition of the coating, and can produce fumes which are released into the air and very noxious to the respiratory system. It can bring about irritation to nose, throat and eyes. PFOA is a likely human carcinogen. It is bio accumulative, which means that it builds up in the human body and is not excreted. Scientific studies indicate that this substance has toxic effects in our health.

The advantages of GreenPan frying pans are simply good to our environment and health. They are long-lasting, outstandingly energy-efficient and extremely heat-resistant. Its excellent non-stick properties are resistant to cuts and scratches and are very easy to clean.

GreenPan has headquarters in Belgium, and is distributed in the Philippines exclusively by Maldive Trading Corp. Their products are available at Gourdo?s, Living Well and other leading home stores.