Rhianna Lambert

Science at school, looking at how heat travels and goes around a room, almost like a radiator.

If you put a radiator in the corner of the room and the heat rises, you know, to the top and then will go across the roof and go around the room.

So it cooks by rapidly circulating hot air around it, which means you can achieve a crispy texture using far less oil than traditional deep fat frying.

So I think air fryers were really created to replace that deep fat frying component from kitchens, which is very beneficial, nutritionally speaking.

It's really good because it can help reduce overall added fats to foods.

But in terms of nutrients and toxicity, that's false.

You know, all cooking methods to some degree alter the structural component of a cell because you're heating, you know, boiling, roasting, grilling, microwaving, all denature enzymes.

They all do something, but you still retain nutrients.

It's only things like vitamin C that are a bit more susceptible, or B vitamins, but most of us never have those deficiencies, particularly of vitamin C, if you eat fruit and vegetables.

So, air fryer doesn't destroy nutrients, first of all, fact number one.

It cooks in a much shorter time, which is a benefit.

But the toxins, now, these components are centered around a conversation on acrylamides, which can form when starchy food like potatoes are cooked at very high temperatures.

This is what I spent a long time writing about in the science of nutrition back in 2020.

And I've got a diagram on how this works.

But it isn't specific to air fryers.

It's when you overheat anything.

You know, we talk about olive oil and its smoke point or oil smoke points.

It's how much you can heat a food before it becomes essentially not good for you.

I also saw people are using these metal devices in barbecues and they're flaking off and they're getting caught in the food.

There have been injuries.