[faeriechangling]

I find it has massive merit on account of the underpowered ranges most home cooks have. You simply can keep a cast iron pan hotter than you can other types of pan. This makes it ideal for high temperature cooking like when searing.

Keep in mind that carbonized and polymerized layer is getting scorched every time you cook with cast iron so it's not the most hospitable environment for bacteria.

[rolleiflex]

My concern was less about hospitability to pathogens (indeed, half the point of cooking is to render things safe to eat), and more about the fact that neither polymerised fat nor carbonised food is good for you in terms of free radicals. It’s essentially burnt oil stuck to the pan, that is not a good thing to eat even in trace quantities.

I do realise that polymerisation is conversion of burnt oil into polymer at which point it is largely inert, but it’s very hard to get an oil to fully polymerise 100% outside of lab conditions.