Gas stoves should not be banned. Courtesy | rawpixel.com
Banning gas stoves will set the culinary world back centuries. Early this month, Richard Trumka of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in an interview with Bloomberg, announced that he was thinking about regulating or even banning gas stoves in favor of electric stoves. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” Citing concerns over children’s health, these officials believe that banning gas stoves will protect the health of the most vulnerable. He later walked these comments back, due to uproar, but the moment deserves a hard look at the issue.
Children’s lives should be protected, but with the science questionable and the alternatives lacking, we should not ban gas stoves. Far better alternatives to a ban exist, including increased ventilation that does not demand the limiting of culinary freedoms.
I’ve used an electric stove top all my life, and that world pales compared to gas stoves. Every time I get to use a gas stove top, the speed and consistency of the heat fill me with excitement. My electric stovetop back home, though relatively new, is inconsistent. One burner heats to a higher temperature than the one underneath, though they are set to the same level. The only way to know that is to feel the heat directly.
With a gas stove, you have the visual element, allowing you to calibrate the flame to the specific height and color that it needs to be. Electric stovetops are used in Hillsdale dorms and the inconsistencies between the Whitley stove top and the Suites stove top exemplifies the problem with electric stove tops. What is an excellent medium cook in the Whitley kitchen is a charred mess in the suites. This inconsistency is not an anomaly, but a characteristic.
Aside from the question of efficiency and consistency, the speed difference is astonishing. If you want to boil something on a gas stove, you fill a pot with water, turn the heat to medium-high, and wait till a rolling boil forms. If you want to boil something on an electric stovetop, you develop a crochet hobby because you’ll be waiting till the coils heat up to the temperature the gas stove was at 20 minutes ago.
Kids should be protected, gas explosions should be avoided, and gas stoves beg questions about environmental impact, (Although the environmental question demands an entirely separate article) but we cannot let our fears push us into the culinary stone age. There is a reason no real restaurant has electric stovetops. The technology is not even equal to what gas stoves had 10 years ago. The government should not force poor culinary equipment on Americans…unless they like bad food.
