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by snapplebobapple 907 days ago
As someone who cooks quite a lot, it's not propaganda. Induction has 2 minor/moderate annoyances vs gas: It gets low temp by varying the time the burner is on full and heating diminishes rapidly if the pan isn't in close contact with the element. The former can be super annoying in some situations (i.e. making a sauce) as the sauce boils for a second, then gets too cold non stop. The latter can be a big problem if your pans warp even a bit (i.e. most non cast iron pans) or if you are basting.

That being said, I currently cook on induction at home because the annoyances above have work arounds/mitigations and the cleanup/ lack of heating the room of induction vs gas is worth more to me than not being annoyed sometimes. I don't like the pressure to get rid of this stuff, it should be individual choice depending on your own personal situation.

2 comments

>it should be individual choice depending on your own personal situation.

Your average individual is completely unequipped to make an informed decision on this topic. They have no idea their crappy gas stove is spewing high volumes of carcinogens and other nasty things into their kitchen.

We do the same thing for toys, my wife should be able to buy my child a toy at the store without having to bring an XRF gun to look for lead paint. Everything in the store should be safe by default. If you want to make a difference _at scale_ that's how you do it.

So, either your comparison is false equivalence or lead is way safer than it has been made out to be and probably deserves less restriction, because gas ranges are not default unsafe.
>because gas ranges are not default unsafe.

They are in fact unsafe by default in basically every metric. In a brand new one spews toxic byproducts into your home, which for most people lacks the ventilation to remove it.

It also comes with the fun side effect of blowing up dozens of houses per year, being environmentally wasteful, and being inferior to induction for cooking.

It's code here to have ventilation and usually make up air for gas ranges, so maybe your area just sucks when it comes to building codes?

It's kind of amusing citing dozens of homes blowing up from gas when NFPA has just a bit under 50,000 electrical fires in homes in the USA due to electrical failure/malfunction each year with ~400 deaths and ~1400 injuries with ~1.5 billion in damages each year. If you add in electrical failure of lighting and distribution equipment in the home you slightly more than double the deaths, and 1.8X the other numbers each year....

Again, it's not inferior to induction cooking, it's better in many ways, but it's really personal preference and people should be allowed to make those choices themselves (as I said, I personally choose induction but I get why people like gas and recognize the ways in which it is superior, as well as the drawbacks).

I found the induction ranges are far more trouble than they're worth to me. The low temperature thing is a serious problem, and I really dislike that you have to use certain types of pans. I've used gas stoves enough to know that they're fine -- but for me they offer no important advantages over electric.

> I don't like the pressure to get rid of this stuff, it should be individual choice depending on your own personal situation.

So much this! Different strokes for different folks.