Cooking should be a joyful activity and while doing it consciously you don’t want to overthink it and take away the positivity. Nevertheless, it pays to be conscious of what you are doing in life especially when it comes to what you put into your body and according to a new study it might be that some water and some salt can create questionable chemicals in your cooking.
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Most tap water these days is disinfected before you drink it. This decontamination is done in several ways including adding chlorine or molecules called chloramines to the water. What researchers have found is that chlorine and chloramines react with iodised table salt you might add to the water or your food to produce hypoiodous acid. This hypoiodous acid isn’t cause for concern in itself but it can react with substances found in food to create byproducts that are virtually new.
The researchers identified 14 completely new molecules among these byproducts and they say we really don’t know what effect these substances may have on human health. So it is not time to panic but taking steps to reduce consumption of these unknown substances also makes sense. The researchers adjusted cooking conditions and found that reducing cooking time and lowering the temperature of cooking reduced formation of the byproducts. The researchers also suggested that chlorinated water is better in this regard than chloraminated water and that salt fortified with potassium iodate produced less byproducts than potassium iodide, or you could consider not using salt at all!
The consensus seems to keep coming back to taking a conscious, slow approach to your food and you won’t go far wrong.
