Yahoo Lifestyle Scientists Say This Is the 'Least Polluting' Cooking Method
Pan-frying, stir-frying, deep-frying, and boiling produce particulate matter and volatile organic compounds that can harm your health. Here's what to do instead.
Lisa Cherkasky for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Honestly, at this point, if you don't have an air fryer, what are you even doing? According to data from Nestlé, some 60% of households in the United States owned an air fryer as of 2023. If you're one of those households, you're going to be very excited about what you'll learn next. And if you're not, let us give you one more reason to convert to everyone's favorite kitchen gadget.
In November, researchers from the University of Birmingham released a study on the impact of different cooking methods on indoor air quality. And surprise, surprise, air fryers gave off the least amount of particulate matter and volatile organic compounds, meaning they offered the cleanest cooking method of all. Here's what you need to know.
Why the study matters
As the researchers noted, "People spend, on average, more than 80% of their time indoors, with cooking emissions contributing significantly to indoor air pollution, including both particulate and gaseous pollutants."
The researchers explained that particulate matter consists of both solid and liquid particles and can have toxic effects on human health depending on their "size, surface area, and chemical composition. " Volatile organic compounds, on the other hand, include fatty acids, alkanes, alkenes, ketones, aldehydes, alcohol esters, aromatics, and heterocyclic compounds, which are "key indoor pollutants and precursors for the formation of secondary pollutants, including aerosols and ozone."
Exposure to any of these indoor pollutants could induce serious health consequences, the team added, including cardiovascular issues, cerebrovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and various lung diseases, along with general irritation in the respiratory system and eyes. They can also increase a person's risk of "cancer and mortality, especially in vulnerable people."
And importantly, the researchers added that recent scientific work has found that indoor air pollutants emitted from cooking "contribute significantly to outdoor pollution," meaning both indoor and outdoor air quality is at risk.
Related: The 8 Best Air Fryers, According to Our Tests
What the study looked at for data
To figure out which cooking method offered the lowest level of emissions, the team tested different methods of cooking a chicken breast. It controlled for the cooking method, the amount of oil or water used, the initial temperature of that oil or water, and the cookware. They noted that the chicken in the test was rather bland, using just chicken breast cooked in rapeseed oil — chosen for its high smoke point — or water with salt, noting no other additional ingredients or seasoning was used, but we'll let that slide.
It then tested five cooking methods: deep-frying and boiling in the pot by induction, stir-frying and pan-frying in the pan by induction, and air-frying in an air fryer. It then collected the emissions rate and aerosol samples for each.
The researchers found a "clear" winner with the air fryer
The observed trends and peak concentrations, the team wrote, "demonstrated clear differences in the cooking methods with respect to particulate matter emissions." They explained that pan-frying ranked dead last as the worst offender, followed by stir-frying, deep-frying, and boiling, with air-frying coming out on top. (To get specific, pan-frying emitted 92.9 micrograms per cubic meter of air and 260 parts per billion of volatile organic compounds, while the air-fryer method produced 0.6 micrograms per cubic meter of air and 20 parts per billion of volatile organic compounds.)
What's more, particulate matter didn't just peak while cooking. The researchers also found that the level of pollutants stayed substantially higher in their test kitchen for more than an hour after cooking was complete. And it wasn't that air fryers were just a little better — they barely even registered a change in air quality when in use.
“Particulate matter levels were so low that they were hard to distinguish from background air,” Christian Pfrang, chair of Atmospheric Science at the University of Birmingham and the study's co-author, shared with Yahoo. “This means that switching from pan frying and stir-frying to air frying will substantially decrease indoor air pollutant exposure.” That's likely because air fryers keep cooking contained compared to the other methods and use far less oil than stir-frying or deep frying.
Related: The Best Air Fryer Cookbooks with Recipes Guaranteed to Impress
Even if you don't have an air fryer, there are still ways to improve air quality.
While this study does make a compelling case for air fryers, we understand not everyone can, or wants to make the investment. And that's OK. Because according to Pfrang, there are a few easy things you can do.
"There are a number of factors that will affect the levels of pollution from cooking alongside the method used, including the amount of oil used and the temperature of the stove," Pfrang said. "What we can say with certainty, however, is that improving the ventilation in kitchens by opening windows or using extractor fans will help to disperse polluting particles and reduce personal exposure."
Read the original article on Food & Wine
