Curate a Non-Toxic Kitchen

Plastic-Free and Lead-Free

The kitchen is not only the heart of the home, but the most important place to make safe and non-toxic for your family. With a few small steps, you can start today to make every bite of food your family consumes safe. It takes time and patience to curate a plastic-free and lead-free kitchen, the two most harmful substances to your health.

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Cookware

Start with your pots and pans. That egg pan that you use every day should be cast iron. Your pots need to be stainless steel. I spent hours researching so you don’t have to. Lead Safe Mama (a mother to a lead-poisoned child) has tons on her site, though tricky to navigate. The bottom line is this: only cook with stainless steel or cast iron pots and pans. I love to spray my cast iron with this oil sprayer that you can fill with your favorite cooking oil (avocado oil is great.)

Bakeware

Baking is where things start to get tricky. I still have a cake pan that’s non stick that I can’t find a replacement for. But I rarely bake cakes. For muffin pans, I usually just use a non-toxic muffin liner so I don’t care what they are made of. I did recently purchase some nice stainless steel sheet pans that I can’t wait to bake and roast with. Just remember to use a natural, unbleached parchment paper. I recently bought this Pyrex glass loaf pan that I love for banana breads and sandwich loaves.

Baking Tools

Mixing bowels and measuring cups are where things get really dicy. I was horrified to find out that the vintage pyrex mixing bowels I had been making my kids pancakes in for years and years had lead based paint. I put those bowels in the dishwasher and watched the green enamel paint color fade away over the years. Little did I know that it was circulating around my dishes covering the entire lot with tiny particles of leaded paint.

Measuring cups and spoons need to be stainless steel. Ditch the plastic ones or cute gold or colored metal ones. Use all glass or stainless steel mixing bowels.

Cutlery

One of my biggest life regrets is exchanging a really expensive silverware set from Crate & Barrel that we got as a wedding gift. At the time I was trying to furnish our first apartment as a newlywed. Now that piece of furniture is long gone and I’m stuck with handed down, mid-grade cutlery.

I have my eye on a set from Liberty Tabletop that are beautiful and non-toxic. They are a made in America and test everything for lead and mystery metals. Make sure your silverware is stamped with “18/10” stainless somewhere. Most importantly – your grandmother’s silver-plated vintage set is full of lead. Use as decor only, seriously.

Air Fryers and Crock Pots

If you hadn’t already guessed, your air fryer drawer that’s black plastic is super toxic. Same goes for the black or other colored glazed coating of your crock pot. There are only a couple of options for non-toxic air fryers. We like this one a lot. As far as crock pots and rice pots and anything else that cooks in a pot the only non-toxic option is the Instant Pot which is stainless steel inside.

Babies and Kids

When it comes to babies and kids there are only two safe options: glass and stainless steel. Your kids are growing up in a world so full of plastic we are only just beginning to see all harm this has caused. Start them out right by making sure the surfaces they eat off of are safe.

Choose stainless steel baby flatware and baby plates for their first bites of food. You will love these baby cups because they won’t grow mold like plastic sippy cups do. Use glass for their baby bottles because good fats in milk stick to plastic, breaking them down over time.

Glassware and Mugs

As a tea drinker with an English bloodline I have collected my share of pretty tea cups made with bone china. It was only recently that I discovered their rose prints and gold laced trim were full of lead paint. I now use those mugs for decoration and drink only out of these lead free glass mugs when consuming tea or coffee.

For a latte I love these 16 ounce glass mugs from Anchor Hocking. When it comes to drinking glasses you owe it to yourself to buy a few Duralex tumblers. These beauties are made in France and I love every single thing this company makes.

Kitchen Utensils

Wooden and stainless steel kitchen utensils are your only safe options for cooking when heat is involved. I still keep a few 100% silicone spatulas on hand for scraping bowels, but I never use them for cooking as silicone is essentially plastic’s cousin.

If any of your kitchen tools have a black plastic handle, replace immediately. It has been discovered that they use recycled electronics to make those handles and that they are full of flame retardants. That is just gross. I recently replaced my potato masher with an all stainless steel one. My kitchen scissors were the last to be upgraded, and I love these ones made in Japan.

Dishes and Tableware Sets

Once again, glass and stainless steel are you friends here. I don’t like the look of either of those when setting a table so thankfully there is a company that has been around forever that makes a white frosted glass plate. The Corelle Vitrelle dishes are super durable three-layer glass dishes that are also chip resistant.

Your mom or grandma may have had the white Corelle dishes with a green border or flower print – but those vintage ones used lead paint. The newer sets are a beautiful non-toxic way to serve your family for years to come. I only recommended the winter frost white or an all white embossed set. Believe it or not the more expensive your set of dishes is the more likely it contains lead. You can read all about dishes that tested positive for lead here.

Small Kitchen Appliances

I wrote an entire post here on what I think are the best coffee makers. There are lots of options out there for plastic-free and BPA-free coffee making machines. I was recently in the market for a food processor and decided to go with Kitchen Aid because of their transparency when it comes to the use of BPA. I ditched our plastic Nutribullet a long time ago and love my glass KitchenAid blender.

Speaking of KitchenAid, many of us have one of their iconic stand mixers. You can now swap out your old dough hook, flat beater and wire whip with this all stainless steel set. It’s really important to do this upgrade since the old beaters contain lead under the enamel (one chip and your cookies are lead tainted.) I also love how their stand mixers come with a juicing attachment. We make a serious amount of orange juice and have burned out motors on small juicers. Juicing with the motor of a stand mixer just makes sense.

Cutting Boards & Knives

Please for the love of all things natural do not ever use a plastic cutting board. I don’t even know why they sell them, let alone why people buy them. They harbor mold and bacteria and shed tiny particles of plastic with every cut. I only use our teak wood cutting board that was a wedding gift to my grandmother. It’s literally 70 years old and sill looks great.

You can pass down your own heirloom cutting board by buying a stellar one like a Boos reversible cutting block. For knives I recommended getting a few high quality ones rather than a big set with ones you’ll never use.

Tupperware and Food Storage

I love a good glass Pyrex Tupperware set. I wrote an article here about my ingenious use of their casserole dishes during Thanksgiving. I used them to bake out of, serve out of and store the leftovers in. I think it goes without saying that you should be using glass to store leftovers in. If your foods contain tomato or fats, these will wear down the plastic. I occasionally like to use these silicone bags. I am careful what I use in them though and it’s usually just frozen fruits and veggies.

Educate Yourself

Here is a good list of resource sites you can read if you need to convince your spouse or significant other that we live in a toxic world and why you deserve that beautiful stainless steel cookware set:

• Lead Safe Mama
• Mamavation
• Be Well

Here is an article about children who were lead poisoned: Parents on how lead poisoning upended their lives: ‘It’s been a rollercoaster of feelings’

Lastly, here is a good article explaining the horrors of plastic: Microplastics are inside us all. What does that mean for our health?

GOOD LUCK!