Air fryers are all the rage - for all the wrong reasons

• Air-fried food may be better than normal fried food but it is still toxic and still causes ageing and cellulite

• Forever chemicals and plastics in air fryers (and other cooking utensils): an endocrine (and environmental) time bomb

• Ceramic and stainless steel air fryers and the issues of acrylamide, aldehydes, HCAs, PAHs, AGEs, ALEs, skin ageing and cellulite

• The best solution is to rarely fry or cook at very high temperatures. But then again, such rare use does not justify buying an air fryer.

• Have a skin tightening/cellulite treatment in London with the experts

• Advanced, infrared / red light therapy treatments in London at LipoTherapeia

• Discover our professional training in cellulite, skin tightening, radiofrequency and ultrasound

Air-fried food may be better than normal fried food but it is still toxic and still causes ageing and cellulite

Air fryers are now the third most-used appliance in UK kitchens after toasters and microwave ovens - and well ahead of conventional ovens. Air fryers owe their popularity to their promise of making fried food but without the excess oil.

Enjoying crispy fried food but without the oil? What not to like, right?

Sure, air fried food is better than normal oil fried too - no question about that. But there are lot of things not to like about the air fryer craze.

Firstly, although oil is diminished, some is still getting fried at very high temperatures. Plus food itself is also getting cooked at very high temperatures.

Secondly, and equally importantly, the vast majority of air fryers’ cooking surface is made of forever chemicals or plastics. These are both an environmental time bomb and an endocrine (hormonal) one - leading to cancer, diabetes, obesity, aging and yes, cellulite too.

Apparently people are throwing away their slow cookers and replacing them with air fryers, i.e. they replace probably the healthiest way of cooking with one of the most unhealthiest.

Sure, most people fry, boil, roast and even slow-cook in forever chemical coated utensils. However, more and more people still insist in ceramic or stainless steel-coated conventional cooking utensils. With air frying it is mainly forever chemicals and plastics that coat the cooking surfaces - and both end up inside the body.

And sure, a lot of people used to fry with oil, as a lot of people used to smoke cigarettes. But replacing chain smoking / oil frying with manic vaping / air frying is not such a huge improvement.

In fact, replacing a ceramic slow cooker (a cooking method used for millennia) with a forever chemical air fryer is definitely a step in the wrong direction. It is akin to replacing a walk down the park, as a pastime, with smoking. Not smart at all.

Forever chemicals and plastics in air fryers (and other cooking utensils): an endocrine (and environmental) time bomb

Forever chemicals is a term for a group of man-made chemicals called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), such as PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid, or C8), PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) and PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene). These chemicals are known for their persistence in the environment and in the bodies of humans and other organisms.

Manufacturers try to convince us that the latest batch of PFAS are safer than before because they are more stable at high temperatures. However, there is always a residue of unstable forever chemicals in all modern coatings. Furthermore, the fact is that no substance is totally, completely stable, including stainless steel and ceramic.

The difference between stainless steel / ceramic and forever chemicals is that when some stainless steel or ceramic microparticles are unavoidably released during cooking or due to scrubbing and scraping, it will not be able to cause endocrine (hormonal) disruption in our bodies, neither will it stay an intact, alien to our body, chemical for hundreds/thousands of years, as forever chemicals do.

In fact, using cooking utensils coated with forever chemicals is an ethical issue, even if such chemicals are 100% stable during cooking (which they never are). All utensils reach their end of life after a few years and the environment is filled with non-biodegradable chemical junk. There is a huge difference between recycling a stainless steel pot and dumbing to landfill a forever chemical coated one.

The same comments about forever chemical coated air fryers and other utensils also apply to plastic coated ones. Even if a cooking device is promoted as BPA-free, it still contains plastics in its surface. And a lot of that unavoidably plastic ends up in our ovaries, testes, breasts, heart, brains and other organs (causing hormonal imbalance, diabetes, heart disease and obesity) and adipose tissue, blood vessels and skin too (causing cellulite and water retention).

Ceramic and stainless steel air fryers and the issues of acrylamide, HCAs, PAHs, AGEs, ALEs, skin ageing and cellulite

What about using the more expensive ceramic or stainless steel coated air fryers? Aren’t they much better?

Sure they are. There is no comparison between stainless steel and ceramic on the one hand and plastic and PFAS on the other.

However, high temperature cooking remains high temperature cooking and still produces acrylamide, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH), Aldehydes, Heterocyclic Amines (HCA), Advanced Glycation End products (AGE), Advanced Lipoxidation End products (ALE), which all lead to disease, skin ageing and cellulite.

Sure enough, frying and other methods of high temperature cooking produce tasty - but indeed unhealthy - foods.

The best solution is to rarely fry or cook at very high temperatures. But then again, such rare use does not justify buying an air fryer.

I am not saying here that we should never have fried food (air fried or oil fried) but to have such foods very rarely.

(Of course, if one wants to eat fried, smoked, broiled, burned food every day - especially meat - it’s their choice. It’s a free world out there - still. But then they will have to also accept all the health - and aesthetic - consequences.)

So for such rare occasions of frying, buying an air fryer does not make any sense, with all the expense (especially for the higher-end, ceramic/stainless steel ones) and surface area occupied in the kitchen.

In those cases, one can just fry conventionally with some quality oil, used only once, just a handful of times a year, in a stainless steel pot. Food will be tastier than air fried and consuming such food once in two months or so will not cause heart disease or cellulite.

Of course, if your kitchen is huge and money is not an object buying a higher-end ceramic / stainless steel air fryer is absolutely fine for frying these six times a year - as long as it doesn’t tempt you to use it every day at the expense of your stainless steel / ceramic slow cooker or good old casserole pot, oven roast dish, steamer, grill pan etc.

But for the love of God, do not load this Earth, as well as your ovaries, heart, brain, testes, kidneys, breasts, liver, blood vessels and, of course fat tissue, with more plastic or forever chemicals. Do your body and the planet a favour.

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