A portion of this video is brought to you by Larq.
Gas stoves have been quite the “hot button issue” lately.
But a range of data from decades’ worth of research has already reached a consensus:
Cooking with gas is dangerous to human health and a significant source of greenhouse gas
emissions.
Electrification has been ongoing, with Europe leading the way in adopting induction cooking.
However, here in the U.S., recent efforts to tackle the pollution generated by gas stoves
have sparked a heated national debate.
Why are people so hot under the collar?
Is gas cooking even that great in the first place?
And is switching from gas to electric worth the investment?
Let’s clear the air on this.
I’m Matt Ferrell … welcome to Undecided.
I’m in the middle of building a new home, and I want to make it as energy efficient
as I can afford to.
When it came to planning out my kitchen, a gas stove was out of the question.
It felt so obvious — why would I want to burn an open flame inside of an airtight box?
But with the recent gas stove controversy, it got me wondering … is there something
I’m missing?
Does it really matter what I’m cooking with?
How bad is gas really?
And is induction the best alternative?
Here’s the dirty truth: Whether you own a gas or electric stove, you produce emissions
every time you cook.
We’re not talking about just CO2 here.
On top of that, there’s particulate matter or PM, like smoke or drops of liquid suspended
in the air.
You can also run into other scary acronyms whenever you crank up your gas or electric
burners to high heat for tasks like searing, broiling, and frying.
One example is volatile organic compounds or VOCs, like acrolein and benzene.
Where you find high fat, you find acrolein.
That’s why when common cooking oils get hot, acrolein joins the party.
And it’s an uninvited guest, because nobody likes the smell of burnt grease.
Fun fact … more like horrifying fact … the French used this to their advantage during
World War I by weaponizing acrolein as tear gas.
That’s right.
Chemical warfare in your kitchen.
Then there’s polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAH, which are chemicals released as things
like oil, gas, wood, and tobacco burn.
That means people inhale PAHs when smoking cigarettes…and when charring meat.
Sadly, that means both activities are linked to cancer.
Sorry to everyone who likes their steak well-done.
Shelly Miller, an environmental engineer and professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
probably said it best in 2021: “Cooking is the No. 1 way you’re polluting your home.”
So, if cooking with any type of fuel brings down the quality of the air you breathe, why
are people focusing so much on gas?
Well, you’re probably already familiar with how gas stoves are a source of carbon monoxide,
which can cause fatal poisoning.
Setting that aside, gas stoves also give off hazardous air pollutants including but not
limited to nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, and methane.
You don’t want any of those in your lungs, but let’s start with why methane is such
a big deal.
Like CO2, methane is a greenhouse gas, but it’s anywhere from 34 to 86 times more potent
than CO2 in terms of its warming effect on the atmosphere.
And, disturbingly, just _owning_ a gas stove is a cause for concern.
In a January 2022 survey of 53 California homes, Stanford University researchers found
that 76% of the total methane emissions produced by gas stoves were released **when they were
off.** Even worse, they found no relationship between the age or price of the stove and
the emissions it produced.
And remember how I said that cooking in general can produce benzene, a carcinogen?
According to an October 2022 study conducted by the California-based PSE Healthy Energy
institute, it turns out that gas stoves also continuously leak benzene when they’re not
in use.
In fact, the research team estimates that 75% of the benzene that gas stoves emit is
released when they’re off.
So, one way or another, gas stoves are a messy subject…and also notoriously very hard to
clean.
This leads us back to our main question: Do gas stoves really make for the best experience?
Let’s just get it out of the way.
It’s definitely true that gas has a reputation as the gold standard for both home and professional
cooking.
The idea is nothing new.
Natural gas companies have been aggressively promoting gas stoves for the past century.
In fact, that’s why we have the idiom “Now you’re cooking with gas!”
— it was first developed as a marketing slogan in the 1930s.
Since then, gas stoves have been hot, and so have the kitchens they’re installed in.
You could say the open flame is a double-edged sword.
As a visual cue, it provides immediate feedback, allowing you to intuitively adjust the temperature
quickly and accurately.
No doubt about it: gas stoves are responsive in a way that can’t really be replicated
with electric...yet.
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Thanks again to LARQ and to all of you for supporting the channel.
Now back to how gas and electric cooking tech compares.
The problem with gas stoves is that they run at efficiencies between 32% to 40%.
You lose a _lot_ of heat, so you might find yourself sweating more than your vegetables.
The remaining heat energy has to go somewhere, and that’s into your home … not your food.
As an experiment, I filmed 1 liter of water coming to a boil on a gas burner, and electric
burner.
You can see how much of the gas burner heat is being lost around the pot.
That’s heating your home vs. your food.
On the other hand, electric cooktops cost about the same amount to run but work at an
efficiency of 75 to 80%.
You can see that the majority of that heat energy is making it to where you want it … the
food.
While gas cooking leaves you with more hot air than hot food, electric appliances narrow
their focus to the burner.
Cooktops with resistive heating elements transfer heat directly to your cookware, while radiant
cooktops have a ceramic layer in between the cookware and the element that the heat has
to transfer through.
One major downside of electric resistive heating element cooktops in general is that you end
up with a lot of residual heat.
Exposed coils can retain heat even when they’re not actively lit.
That’s why ceramic topped stoves use indicator lights to warn you when they’re still running
hot.
Another disadvantage is that if you’re unlucky enough to accidentally crack the surface of
a ceramic top, you’re suddenly out of a stove.
Still, electric cooktops do eliminate a lot of inconveniences associated with gas stoves
by design.
You don’t have to worry about exposure to nitrous oxides, they’re much easier to clean,
and, well, you’re safer and cooler without a fire beneath your pans.
What often makes electric cooktops the most unappealing is the illusion of slowness.
Electric is faster to heat than gas in the majority of cases.
And according to Consumer Reports, gas stoves are usually the slowest to boil water.
The thing is, we can sense the liveliness of a fire.
Staring at a red electric glow isn’t very exciting, and it’s more difficult to determine
the temperature you’re working with.
Even more critically, the speediness of flames is still superior when you transition between
temperatures.
On a gas stove, moving between high to low is pretty much instantaneous.
On electric cooktops, residual heat causes a notable delay as you transition to lower
temperatures.
This thermal inertia means that you have to think ahead as you cook and anticipate the
time the stove will take to match the setting on the dial.
Some electric stove owners go as far as to preheat burners.
Like anything else, it takes practice to get used to this quirk, and it’s understandable
to just not want to deal with the frustration.
The good news is, it doesn’t have to be this way.
By cooking with induction, you get all the advantages of electric with an even higher
efficiency of up to 85% to 90%.
That’s because through induction, you’re not heating the atmosphere or even any burners:
just your cookware.
An induction cooktop transfers heat energy straight to the pan and _only_ the pan.
How?
With magnets.
When you cook with induction, an alternating current flows through the coils beneath the
burner and generates a magnetic field.
Magnetic materials like iron don’t conduct electricity well, so when a ferromagnetic
pot or pan is placed within that field it heats up.
This makes induction cooking significantly safer.
The cooktop itself hardly warms up and can only heat metal.
I mean, you can actually place something like a dollar bill right against an induction cooktop
pot as its heating without any issues.
So klutzes can breathe a sigh of relief, because you’re a lot less likely to burn yourself.
Several models also have an automatic shutoff feature.
Another huge advantage of induction is that it allows you to cook at precise, consistent
temperatures in a way that you can’t do with gas or resistive electric heating elements.
On some induction cooktops, you can set a specific temperature for perfect results every
time.
Basically, upgrading to induction is like going from analog to digital.
Logistics-wise, swapping an resistive cooktop for an induction one can be very simple because
you might be able to get away with keeping your existing outlet.
However, there’s a reason why only about 3% of U.S. households cook through induction.
The biggest barrier is cost.
Broadly speaking, natural gas is a lot cheaper for the average household to use than electricity.
But when you compare induction and gas stoves specifically, which state you live in seems
to matter more than what fuel you’re cooking with, according to an analysis by Grist.
In some states, the difference between the annual costs of gas and induction could mean
saving $20.
In other states, it could mean paying an extra $20.
Keep in mind, though, that induction cooking is faster, so you’ll naturally be using
less energy.
If you want to see an excellent video on the differences in speed, you’ve got to check
out Alec from Technology Connections.
On his second channel, Technology Connextras, he made an [epic video on the speed differences.
I won’t go into the same detail here, but I found similar results in my testing.
Either way, making the jump from gas to induction is a hefty investment considering both the
cost of installation and the stove itself.
Right now it’s possible to snag an induction cooktop for around $1,000, but that’s about
as low as it goes.
That’s an intimidating price tag in comparison to gas or electric stoves, which can be as
low as $400.
You also have to factor in a potential need for new cookware.
Because induction cooktops are magnetized, pots and pans have to be as well.
Many stainless steel pans will work, but it depends on their composition.
If a magnet can stick to the bottom of your pot or pan, you’re good to go.
The technology is still going through a few growing pains, too.
Induction can sometimes be a noisy process, so you might have to deal with whirring fans,
buzzing, or clicking, especially at higher heat settings.
Induction burners tend to be smaller, so there’s a hard limit to the number of pans you can
work with at once and the diameter of the cookware you can use.
Otherwise, you’ll notice a sharp boundary between the surface area where food is thoroughly
and evenly heated…and food that is being left out.
The effect of the magnets is very precise.
One more hitch: the magnetic field can interfere with digital meat thermometers.
That said, the U.S. is behind the curve on induction, with it holding less than 10% of
the cooktop market share.
Meanwhile, induction represents about 36% of Europe’s market share.
The tides may be turning, though.
During a June 2022 survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by Consumer Reports, 51% of respondents
said they’d “maybe” consider induction the next time they were on the hunt for a
new stove, and 18% said “yes.”
The rest hadn’t heard of induction.
That’s a problem.
Hopefully induction will become more commonplace as prices continue to fall.
If your curiosity is piqued, you can give a single portable burner a try … like the
one I used in my testing.
Some models run for roughly $60, but you can find high end ones all the way up to $1,500.
Obviously, experiment on the cheaper side first.
As for my new home, I’ll definitely be going with induction.
Energy efficiency and speed were the deciding factors for me.
For those of you that cook with gas, you’re not doomed if that’s your only option.
To keep your air as clean as possible, the easiest thing to do is to just crack open
a window when you use your stove.
The fans in your bathroom can also help.
And it’s important to note that even though ventilation is important, kitchen exhaust
hoods are generally ineffective at dealing with pollutants.
Research shows air purifiers can help cut down on nitrous oxides, though.
Even better, avoid relying on your stove to protect both your health and your wallet.
Smaller electric appliances like toaster ovens, tea kettles, air fryers, and crock pots can
get you food heated faster _and_ with less energy.
That’s a smart practice regardless of what kind of cooktop you have.
In the end, the best stove for you comes down to your preferences.
But for the sake of efficiency and your health, you’re way better off with electric, and
induction is the safest option hands down.
On top of which, if you go electric, you can also power your stove from solar panels on
your roof.
It’s a good way to take control of your own energy use and energy generation.
If you’re been thinking of getting solar but feel overwhelmed at what to do, that’s
exactly why I created the “Achieve Energy Security With Solar” guide!
It can be overwhelming because you don’t know what you don’t know.
Go to the URL in the description for more details and as part of this initial offer
I’m going to be holding a group Zoom call to answer questions you may have after going
through the guide.
I’m really excited to help as many of you as I can to go through this process.
But when it comes to cooking with gas … what would you choose for your home?
Do you use induction?
Like it?
Jump into the comments and let me know.
And be sure to check out my follow up podcast Still TBD where we'll be discussing some of
your feedback.
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And thanks to all of you for watching and commenting.
I’ll see you in the next one.