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Oct. 28, 2024 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:14
The Truth About America's Pizza: What You Need To Know | Dr. Oz | S7 | Ep 106 | Full Episode
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Time Text
The truth behind one of your favorite foods.
Why is this mozzarella different from the cheese that's found in a lot of other pizzas?
We go inside America's Pizza.
It's about what's hiding in the crust.
What you need to know.
Plus...
Do chemicals leach into our food from these boxes?
Oz investigates.
And our chemicals in your cookware.
We sort through which are the safest.
next us will save lives today You guys ready to get healthy?
Welcome to the show.
All this month, we are uncovering the truth behind America's biggest foods.
And today, one of your absolute favorites, pizza.
Mmm.
I know you're all applauding, but there are some folks who estimate that the average American will eat more than 6,000 slices of this wonderful stuff in their lifetime.
So today we're asking the question, how did pizza going from being a wholesome Italian staple like this, it's about 250 calories, to an American fast food where the calories have more than tripled, like in this slice.
This stuffed sausage and pepperoni has about 800 calories and 40 grams of fat in one slice.
It's half of everything you did in a whole day in one slice.
Something, my friends, has changed, and it's not just the fat and the calories.
It's about what's hiding in the crust.
Even the chemicals in the box that it comes in.
So today, we're getting to the bottom of it, pardon the pun.
And then from takeout to home cooking, we're showing you how to avoid the unwanted chemicals in your cookware.
We're also going to kick off this whole thing with our core team expert and food journalist, Mark Shasker.
To talk about what's gone wrong with pizza in America.
Music.
It all started in southern Italy, where the roots of pizza stretched back centuries, thin crusts with toppings like fresh cheese, red tomatoes, and garlic.
It wasn't until the late 1800s that pizza made its way to America, when it was brought over by poor Italian immigrants.
And for decades, Italian Americans made pizza the way it was in the mother country.
Simple, fresh, and healthy.
So where did pizza go wrong?
I like to start the pizza tour in front of the first pizzeria in the United States, Lombardi's.
I met pizza expert Scott Wiener, who gives pizza tours of Manhattan, and he told me the story.
So Scott, early on, pizza in America was a lot like it was in the mother country, but then it changed.
Tell me what happened.
Yeah, well, at first we were using fresh mozzarella, which is just milk and water and salt.
But that changed when demand went beyond supply and we switched to these longer shelf life cheeses like low moisture mozzarella that you now get in the grocery store and has a shelf life of six months as opposed to the fresh mozzarella's 48 hours.
So it's not just cheese, right?
Tomato sauce also changed.
Yeah, in fact they weren't even originally using sauce.
It was just like canned tomatoes.
Now it's all about these pre-made jarred sauces that are packed with sugar and preservatives so that they have the shelf life that matches that of the cheese.
From New York, pizza went to Chicago where it was made even less healthy by fattening the crust.
So-called deep dish pizza was born.
But a better word for it might be deep carb.
And that's over 500 calories per slice.
Some new restaurants are returning to pizza's roots by baking pies with thin crusts, amazing cheese, and get this, toppings that are actually good for you.
These places are popping up everywhere, and I came here to Brooklyn to visit one of my favorites, Roberta's.
So if you had to kind of sum it all up, what makes your pizza different from most sort of standard American pizza?
Well, we use the best ingredients that we can get, and we try and use them in moderation.
Anthony made me a pizza with telegio cheese, chili, garlic, and more kale than you'd put on a salad.
Call it the new American pizza.
One that's as good to your body as it is to your taste buds.
Oh my god.
Awesome.
That is incredible.
And you're eating kale.
Look at that.
Pizza historian Scott Wiener is here to help you navigate pizza for your family.
So I gather hope is not lost for all of America on pizza.
Not at all.
I mean, that fast food thing is going away and the current trend is actually for more like real whole ingredients on pizza, more like what it was 250 years ago.
Alright, so we'll get to the key three changes in the ingredients that make our pizza.
The first has to do with cheese.
In our Food Truth series, Mark showed us how cheese has changed in the pizza.
It's becoming commercialized, not the fresh mozzarella that Roberto is making now.
Look at this stuff.
I wish you could smell this at home.
Isn't that fantastic?
You like that?
I like it too, so...
You're squeezing little balls out.
So Scott, what's going on here?
Why is this mozzarella different from the cheese that's found in a lot of other pizzas?
Yeah, well, we're used to having the cheese that kind of covers the entire pizza.
This is fresh mozzarella.
It's only milk, salt, water.
That's it.
It's orgasmic.
Yeah, it's awesome.
Can I get a bite?
No, there's nothing for you.
Not enough to share.
Keep talking.
You know what it's like?
We're used to having these pizzas that are cheese covering everything wall to wall, and they're kind of greasy and oily.
You know how it is.
Sometimes you get a pizza that's too oily, and you whip out the napkin.
You make sure nobody's looking first, and then you start blotting it off.
And then you get a napkin that looks like this, right?
Now, meanwhile, you go over to a slice of pizza made with the fresh mozzarella, and the only thing that you're going to blot off on top is tomato and extra virgin olive oil.
I mean, it's nothing.
All I see is red tomato.
Yeah, look, there's very little on yours and tons on the other one.
How about the color?
I noticed mine's white, and this was more of a yellowish color, the shredded stuff.
Yeah, so there's more preservatives in this.
This has nothing.
Salt is the only preservative.
Totally natural.
The color of the cheese is going to give you a clue right away if you have fresh mozzarella or if you have low-moisture mozzarella.
And low moisture mozzarella, by the way, when you buy it pre-shredded like this, it's coated in corn starch and potato starch and more anti-caking agents that just lend more grease.
So if you want to order a pizza and make sure that you're getting the mozzarella, how do you do it?
If you order a pizza margarita, you're going to get something like this.
Fresh mozzarella, simple.
The other stuff you just don't know.
Yeah, it's all questionable.
Fresh mozzarella, at least you know that it's going to be a cleaner product.
Roberto, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
This place gives a lot of joy to people.
All right, next up, the sauce.
Obviously, critical sauces nowadays.
They're loaded with sugar.
They're loaded with lots of things you don't want in them.
But Giulio's making something very special.
He's actually making it in a way where we don't have a lot of junk in there.
So before Giulio gets a little moment to speak about this, Scott, why is it so important to you?
Well, most sauces you think of like a canned sauce and it's already prepared, and that's tons of sugar in there.
What Julio's doing is just crushing up whole tomatoes.
I mean, you can buy a can of whole peeled tomatoes, crush them up by hand, and that's it.
You're done.
The real secret of this thing is you don't even have to cook this stuff.
It's not cooked?
No, no.
It cooks when it's on the pizza inside the oven.
Shubhi, why don't you just use a masher?
Why use your hands?
We want to leave the chunks in order to preserve most of the tomato flavor and let the water evaporate.
So we don't want to grind it and break the seeds because the seeds of the tomato are bitter.
So we don't want to grind it.
We use our hands in order to preserve as much as possible for the pulp.
Your accent is making me hungry.
So if you're unsure, this is what it looks like afterwards.
That watery stuff has been sort of dissolved into it.
How do you order a fresh tomato pie?
Can you actually get that, literally?
Yeah, I mean, you can order a fresh tomato pizza.
Again, a pizza margarita will probably have something like this.
But you just look for color.
I mean, sugar is going to make caramelization happen.
So if somebody's added sugar, and if they've cooked down their sauce, it will look darker.
So if you look for a brighter color tomato, you're probably going to get something that was a whole product and not cooked.
Julia, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Finally, the crust, the chain pizza.
We're now seeing a laundry list of hidden ingredients.
We have fats, we have additives, we have preservatives.
Nino's here.
What's in your crust, Nino?
Simple stuff.
Flour, water, salt, and natural yeast.
That's it.
That's how we do it in Brooklyn.
I'm sure I broke it.
All right.
So can I see a slice of pizza?
You got them in there?
Yeah.
Yeah, we got a pie in the oven.
Oh, look at that.
Oh, my goodness.
Fresh out of the oven.
Now, as you cut this for us, Scott, let me ask you this.
Can you tell if the dough has been the kind you want, which is the fermented kind, or is it the stuff that has all that junk in there?
Yeah, you can definitely tell.
I mean, when you look at a slice from, like, a standard under-fermented pizzeria, if you look at the cross-section of the slice, it looks dense, kind of like white bread.
And it's so dense that sometimes the dough doesn't even cook all the way through.
But then you look at something like this.
Nino, go ahead and cut that.
I mean, he's good at it, too.
What a show-off!
He's so good at slicing.
I mean, look at this.
And I see super wide open whole structure.
I mean, that means that this dough has been stretched properly and fermented properly as opposed to this, which is going to sit in your stomach and make you real full real fast.
What's the health benefits of something that's fermented versus not?
Well, the starches have been broken down by yeast and bacteria overnight in this long 24 to 48 hour fermentation.
That's how long you leave it out?
48 hours for the pizzeria, yeah.
So is this regular dough or your dough?
This is my dough, yeah.
This is the same dough that we use at the pizzeria.
This is before it's fermented, and then this is after the 48 hours.
Oh my goodness, it really changed.
Yeah.
You could see some of the bubbles inside of it.
This one, no bubbles yet.
It's still springy.
It pops back.
This one, he's going to be able to stretch it out real nice and easily because it's been rising up.
Folks ought to look at their pizza the way you just investigated and try to pick a kind that's fermented.
Like I said, I didn't know about this before, but I am fascinated that it might actually help the digestive process.
It really is.
Plus, it probably tastes better.
The boot.
All right, so the ultimate test comes to the audience.
Are you ready to be tested, you know?
Absolutely.
All right, this is for all the chefs out there.
Come on over, Scott.
The audience members have been eating slices of pizza with these top three ingredients, the way they're supposed to be given to you.
So how does this pizza stack up?
Well, your mouth's full.
I can't ask you.
It's delicious.
It's okay?
It's delicious.
Yeah.
I really like it.
It's very nice.
I gave you a free pizza.
I love this.
Final word, how would this compare to the pizza you would normally have gotten?
With the right kind of mozzarella cheese in there, the right kind of sauce, and of course the crust.
I love pizza.
This is outstanding.
I love it.
It's like a garden in your oven.
Fantastic.
Thank you all.
Scott, thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thanks for being the historian for all of us.
Up next, for every mom who has ever dialed the pizza delivery number as a lifeline for a quick, hot dinner fast, because we've all been there, right?
Because you need it quickly.
We have the insider's guide to ordering the healthiest pizza out there, including a look at your best choices at the biggest pizza chains all across America.
We'll be right back.
Next, we're gonna show you how to have your slice and eat it too.
We looked at some of the most popular pizza chains around the country to find out how to order a pie that's actually good for you.
Both of these slices of pizza are less than 200 calories.
A healthy ordering guide no matter who you call.
Charlie Sheen sets the record straight.
I did an experiment with a gentleman who was making very extreme claims.
It went bad fast.
He responds to the doctor who told him he was cured.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
We've been investigating what you may not know about your pizza now.
Now, some really good news for all of you who think you can't indulge in a slice when a craving hits.
My medical team took part in an investigation of pizza shops all around the country to deliver you the insider's guide to ordering the healthiest pizza.
Now, look at all these menus.
They all belong to one woman, Tina, who says she relies on pizza delivery to get through her busy week.
I know a lot of you feel the exact same way.
Tina, what is your biggest concern about your pizza habit?
Well, it's really easy.
I can have it delivered to the house, or I can pick it up on my home from work.
My biggest concern is what's the healthiest to order.
It is a lifeline, isn't it?
It's the one thing you can just outsource.
15 seconds to work, and between 20 minutes later, you have your solution.
So I'm going to give all of you right now an idea that you're going to love.
You can have your pizza and eat it, too.
It's actually doable, but you've got to check off a bunch of nutritional boxes to make it happen, and I've got an automatic way to make sure that happens the right way for you and your family.
Interested?
Yeah.
Really interested?
Absolutely.
All right, come over.
What do you normally put in a pizza?
Well, my son loves bacon, my daughter loves sausage, and I'm a pepperoni person, so it tends to be a lot of meat.
A lot of meat, alright.
So, the first thing you've got to look for is a thin crust pie, and you have to have veggie toppings.
This is a little compromise, but it's worth doing, and there are easy solutions and options in all the major pizza shops.
For example, Pizza Hut's got this thing called the Veggie Lovers Thin and Crispy Pizza.
It saves you 20 calories right up the bat because it's got a thin crust.
There's broccoli on there, and there's some onions, but there aren't lots of sausages and other things you mentioned.
But they still taste fabulous.
And at Papa John's, they got this thing.
It's called the Garden Fresh Pizza.
It's packed with veggies, got olives and bell peppers, and because of that, lots of antioxidants and vitamins.
Both of these slices of pizza are less than 200 calories compared to the 800 calories that a lot of the other slices have.
You want to give a try to one of them?
I'll try that one.
Give it a shot.
Thanks.
And more importantly, I want to know if your kids would try that.
But look, it's topping with things.
And I mentioned nutritional boxes.
You can go ahead and fold it.
Those nutritional boxes you check off, your kids will be very happy about long-term.
It's really good.
So you can get past it.
Could you have skipped a sausage once in a while for that?
Mm-hmm.
I think my kids would eat that.
You know, I'm going to go to this next table.
You keep eating.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you, Tina.
Next, Lisa's here.
She says she eats pizza at least three times a week.
Is that true three times a week?
Sometimes.
Usually it's about two, but sometimes it rolls into three or four.
So my producers had access to your phone, thanks to you, and they actually took this little snapshot.
This is her call list.
Now, these are all the pizza places.
There's Domino's Pizza four times.
By the way, are those hearts, is that little heart sign?
Is that your husband over there?
It says hubby heart?
Yes, that's my husband.
You're calling the pizza place more than your husband.
Well, they actually listen to me, Dr. Oz.
I love it.
All right.
So explain your obsession with pizza.
Why three or four times in a week?
Well, other than the fact that it's a really awesome comfort food, and who doesn't like that ooey, cheesy goodness, I can grab it, eat it over the box, and I don't have to do dishes after a long day.
All things singing to the women in the audience.
All right, so here's what you're going to do next time.
Domino's has this thing called the Hawaiian pizza.
156 calories.
Pineapple, of course, excellent source of vitamin C. And I'm going to give you an extra little trick.
So you know a serving size is about the size of your hand.
That's what a slice of pizza should be.
No bigger than that.
If you order a double cut, It means they put an extra line of cuts like they did in this pizza.
Notice this, by the way.
See, they're smaller slices.
You actually have half the calories, which psychologically is a big deal because you can eat twice as much and not hurt yourself.
I do that sometimes for the little ones.
Yeah, for the little ones, we always do it.
You should do it for yourself as well.
Certainly if you have parties, do it.
But this is a very clever way of having your pizza without hurting yourself too badly.
Awesome.
All right, enjoy it.
And finally, I got a pizza fanatic.
Nikisha's here.
Where do you order from, Nikisha?
I usually order from my local pizzeria or wherever there's a coupon.
Well, coupons are good to look for.
They are awesome.
I'm going to give you a cheat sheet.
I researched this with my medical unit.
We've created a formula for ordering pizza the right way.
So you get all the benefits we've been talking about here.
That's what the cheat sheet looks like.
I'm going to put it up on DrRoz.com.
But here it is.
Don't give it to anybody else.
I won't.
Pick it.
Do you have your phone?
Go ahead and dial it in.
Let's see what she says now.
Hi.
Can I have a thin crust whole wheat pizza, double cut, whole the meat, with all veggie toppings?
All the veggies.
All the veggies you want.
Okay, thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
How long is it going to be?
25 minutes.
Oh, get out of here.
That's the quickest out of the order.
Let me have that over here.
I can do better than that.
This is your pizza as you ordered it with all the things you asked for.
Thank you.
15 seconds later.
The best delivery.
I know you all at home want this formula for your dialing ease.
Next time you want to go get a pizza, I'm going to put this insider's guide to the healthiest pizza, including the foolproof formula.
No matter where you are, no matter who you're ordering from, you can get it easily.
It's on DrRoz.com.
Up next, some good news from the FDA about your next pizza delivery.
Stay with us. - Coming up next, can the box that holds your pizza be contaminating your pie?
We investigate to see what is actually being delivered to your door.
Are these containers making your pizza a toxic takeout?
What the FDA is doing to protect you?
next.
Today's show is all about how to avoid unwanted calories, fat, and chemicals in your favorite foods, Now we've been talking about pizza, and now an investigation into the boxes that they come in.
There have been headlines around the country that have recently claimed that these pizza boxes may be toxic.
So we wanted to investigate and bring you the facts.
Let's start way back in the beginning.
Here you have your pizza.
It's a fundamentally warm, moisture-emitting food, lots of moisture, but as a relatively dry component, it's also called the dry crust.
Millions of pizza shops around the world were tasked to create a vessel in which we transport this food to millions of your homes.
So the earliest dedicated pizza boxes were born.
These were thin paperboard bakery boxes.
We all remember these when we were really young, right?
They were fantastic.
They did a great job for quite some time.
But, you know, the material itself was never meant to withstand the intense moisture.
So what happened?
The weakened box would begin to collapse under its own weight like this.
So more changes needed to be made.
Then came the corrugated cardboard box.
Like this.
It still didn't work perfectly.
It wasn't heat preserved, and therefore moisture still leaked through.
And so we weren't happy.
So then companies turned to chemicals to improve the boxes even more.
They get these chemicals that repelled water and oil, preventing your pizza box from getting destroyed, and keeping your pizza warm and intact when it arrived at your front door, which is what we all want.
But here's the big question.
Do chemicals leach into our food from these boxes?
Is it possible?
Join me now is senior scientist, David Andrews, from the Environmental Working Group, one of the organizations who has raised that very question.
So, when we heat up our pizza and put it in a box that's been chemically treated, do the chemicals leach into the food that we eat?
These chemicals do leach into the food.
It's really quite surprising in some ways.
When the food touches, when the pizza touches the box, When the pizza's hot, even more of the chemicals migrate into the food.
Your hands touch the box, and then they touch the pizza, and then you ingest these chemicals.
And these chemicals that coat pizza boxes are extremely potent.
They've been known to increase your risk of getting cancer or other, you know, wreck havoc on your reproductive system.
So these are really potent, toxic chemicals that have been used to coat pizza boxes.
Well, thank you for helping put it on everyone's radar screen.
You know, we've been talking about this on the show.
We sound the alarm, not about pizza boxes, but about the popcorn that you put in microwaves because those containers have similar chemicals.
But there's good news to report.
At the beginning of this year, the FDA banned three chemicals used in pizza boxes and other food packaging.
That's fantastic.
We don't have to worry about that anymore.
I applaud the FDA for taking this big step in the right direction.
So the end solution is that your pizza is actually safer today than it was yesterday.
Thank you.
Up next, from Take After Home Cooking, we're giving you the truth about the chemicals in your cookware.
We'll be right back.
Next, should we be throwing away those old nonstick pans?
From scratches to overheating, are the chemicals staying on the pan or are they getting into our food?
We uncover the truth and sort through the best cookware options coming up next.
Charlie Sheen sets the record straight.
I did an experiment with a gentleman who was making very extreme claims.
It went bad fast.
He responds to the doctor who told him he was cured.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Today's show is all about how to avoid unwanted calories, fat, and of course chemicals in your favorite foods.
Now we just talked about takeout, now let's talk about home cooking.
What's the truth about the chemicals in your cookware?
Today we're looking into the three non-stick surfaces and we're starting with one of the most popular and controversial, Teflon.
No more scraping, no more grinding, no more pounding, no more scouring, no more problems, no more mess.
Since the 1950s, nonstick cookware has revolutionized the way we cook, leaving behind the days of scraping and scrubbing all those pots and pans in the kitchen sink.
And people were also excited about the health benefits of cooking with less butter and oil.
But a decade ago, non-stick cookware and its non-stick ingredients, a family of chemicals called PFCs, also known as Teflon, came under fire for potentially dangerous side effects to your health.
The issue?
When non-stick cookware is exposed to high temperatures, toxic fumes from the PFCs are released, putting people at risk for respiratory problems, thyroid disease, reduced fertility, even cancer.
So, should you scrap your most convenient cookware, or is there a safe way to stick with your non-stick pots and pans?
So let's start with the question everyone wants to know.
Is the chemical related to health problems still in nonstick cookware that you buy today?
The answer is, not so simple.
Teflon is a brand name, right?
It's related to a lot of chemicals.
In fact, the whole family of chemicals.
Think of it as leaves on a tree.
And these same chemicals that we talked about in those pizza boxes earlier, it's the family tree of chemicals.
Some that are dangerous, some we don't know.
These PFOAs, the ones that we think are concerning, they're a problem.
But they've been taken out of cookware.
So that leaf of the tree is gone.
But other similar chemicals were developed to take its place.
And they look sort of similar but not the same.
They're thought to be safer, but until we study them a little longer and people report issues or not, we're just not going to know for sure.
So it really becomes about keeping the chemicals on the pan and not in your food.
And there are ways we can do that.
And to help us figure out exactly how to succeed is consumer expert Lisa Lee Freeman.
Thank you, as always, for being here.
How are you doing?
First question, because it's the first one I always get asked.
If people have a scraped up Teflon pan, does that mean that it's a dangerous pan?
Surprisingly, no.
You could actually continue to use those pans safely.
You may want to get rid of them because maybe they lose their nonstick coating a little bit, but the particles that flake off actually go through your system and they don't get absorbed, so you shouldn't worry about that.
So, we don't have to worry about scraping, which saves a lot of pans in America.
Yes.
The second issue is this temperature problem.
Yes.
This 500 degrees keeps coming up.
How much of a warning is that, and how do we know if our pans got in the 500 degrees?
Well, you want to keep the heat on low or medium.
You don't want to put a Teflon pan on high flame, because that's when the pot or the pan reaches 500 degrees very quickly and starts emitting those fumes.
And those fumes can not only make you sick, if you have birds, they could kill birds.
Birds?
Yes, absolutely.
I have a parrot at home, so I don't cook with them.
Got to be careful.
Also, you want to make sure your kitchen is well ventilated.
If you've got a kitchen fan, turn it on when you cook.
If you've got a window, crack it open a little bit.
Very important.
Let me show everybody why this is a concern.
Here's the basic thought.
So, let's say you've got some food in a non-stick pan, right?
And there's a temperature over there.
It's a pan temperature.
And this has actually been done.
So as you heat up the meat, obviously the pan gets hot as well.
And the chemicals inside the pan begin to come out once you get to 500 degrees, those little green things, and they actually get into your food in a way that you actually can't tell.
They get into the air around you, and then when you eat that food or breathe the air in around the pan, it gets into you.
Now you know, Teflon is something you don't want to have in your body, ideally.
And the best way to make sure it doesn't come from your pan into your body is to make sure you keep that pan less than 500 degrees.
But the question is, and most home cooks have to know this, is how do I figure out if my pan is 500 degrees?
So Lisa went to the Institute of Culinary Education to investigate.
So I'm here with Chef James Brichione at the Institute of Culinary Education, and he's going to be cooking a piece of salmon in a light, non-stick pan at medium to high heat to see just how long it takes for that pan to reach the magic number of 500 degrees.
We're going to start our timer.
And we're on the heat already.
We're reading somewhere between 375 and 415. We're starting to...
Oh, wow.
We're going up fast now.
You know, now we're at a minute and a half on medium high.
Oh, now we're at that 500 mark.
That's a minute and 37 seconds.
In order to prevent the pan from hitting 500 degrees and releasing toxic chemicals, what tips do you suggest?
Tip number one, heat your food on a lower flame.
You don't need to crank the heat way up high to get proper browning and help the food not stick in the pan.
Tip number two, you want to cook with a heavier non-stick pan.
That pan's going to hold the heat better and doesn't require as much heating from the burner.
Tip number three, never preheat a non-stick pan for too long.
Light coating of oil and then put a drop of water in the pan.
If it sizzles, then you're ready to cook.
Great tips.
Thank you.
So good news, you do not have to throw out your non-stick cookware.
It is good especially for cooking delicate items like fish and eggs.
That's how I use it.
But Lisa says there's another non-stick option where you don't have to worry about the temperature at all.
And it is all the rage right now, ceramic cookware, which is of course naturally non-stick.
But the question is, how well do they work?
So Lisa set up a consumer test right here on the set to figure it out.
So tell us what you did.
Well, these are all ceramic pans at different price points, and we wanted to see how well do they work.
So we cooked omelets in all the different pans, and as you can see, they work pretty well.
I mean, they work just as well as regular nonstick pans, the Teflon ones, but they don't emit those fumes, and they're a great alternative to Teflon.
So you have three price points here, $30, $55, and $100.
Right.
So what's the difference?
What makes this one worth more?
Well, feel the weight of this pan.
One of the things you want to do when you're shopping for these pans is feel them in your hand.
Feel the difference.
You want to get the heftiest pan you can for your money, something that feels really solid in your hand.
So yeah, let's get that other one out there so we can eat those.
It weighs a lot more.
That's the only real difference, just a thicker pan than a $100 pan?
It gives you better heat distribution while you're cooking, and it's going to hold up better.
But another tip you want to keep in mind is read those user reviews, because the nonstick coating on all nonstick pans doesn't last forever.
So see what people are reporting to see if the pans are warping or losing their nonstick surface.
And a lighter, thinner pan is not going to last as long as a really heavy pan that's really got some heft to it and has a really nice If you were buying a pan right now, is this what you'd buy?
I just bought this pan.
I love it.
This one?
Yes, this exact pan.
I'm taking this home with me.
Hasn't been used.
All right, up next is a big one.
One of the trendiest cookware options is also one of the oldest.
It's also the least understood.
I'm going to reveal the biggest health myths around your cast iron pans.
Who has cast iron pans here?
Oh, I love this.
You're going to like this a lot.
Like it or not, these things are actually very interesting.
Should you be able to clean it or not?
Should you put soap on it or not?
Does it go in the dishwasher?
How do you prepare it so it does the best for you?
And does it have an extra health benefit you never imagined?
We're putting it all together and putting it all to the test.
We'll be right back.
Coming up next, they're built to last.
These tough as nails skillets can be intimidating.
I'm here with viewers who swear by their pains.
Do you have to season them first?
How do you clean them?
We take the guesswork out of your cast iron pans.
Next.
There's no question about it.
Cast iron pans are back.
And if you know how to use them, they can be a natural, non-stick alternative to prepare your favorite dishes.
But they can be a little tricky and they can be a little bit heavy.
So when it comes to cast iron, there are lots of myths.
And today, I'm here with viewers who swear by their pans.
And we're going to set the record straight on the healthiest health myths out there about cast iron and whether or not you should believe them or not.
First, fact or myth, you should never wash your iron pans.
Or you will lose the flavor.
I've got Didi and Jennifer here.
They both love their cast iron tools.
But they have very different approaches to cleaning.
Didi, what do you clean your pan with?
Oh, totally soap and water.
It grosses me out.
I have to wash it.
I love my pan.
I use it for everything.
I saute vegetables, chicken, bacon, and eggs.
And plenty more.
And you wash it every time?
Wash it every time.
All right, Jennifer, how about you?
How often do you wash it?
I don't use soap on my pan at all.
I was told that that could ruin it.
My mother told me it might make it rust, and I'll lose the flavor.
And I also use it all the time.
I cook everything from pancakes to steak and lots of pork roll, and I just rinse it off, and nobody's gotten sick, so it might be okay.
So soap has never touched this?
Correct.
So are you okay if I take my trusted meter, dirty meter, and check it out?
That sounds good.
This is for all the women out there who have never washed their pants.
I'm going to take my little swab here.
This is usually where the pork is, about here.
How about in these corners over here?
Is that reflective, you think?
Oh, a little bit of stuff there.
All right, now we're going to see how many germs are in here.
We put them back inside here.
You want to break this for me?
Just break that.
Perfect.
Once you break it, just shake it up a little bit like this.
And here's the thing.
In order to read this, you've got to know, there.
15 seconds from now, we'll have the answer for you and your mom and anybody else who's worried about this.
If it's less than 10, that means it really was clean, but nothing there.
10 to 30 means there's maybe a little stuff there, not much at all.
Above 30, I get a little bit nervous.
Okay.
Are you nervous?
Yeah.
All right.
The answer is zero.
Okay.
Zero!
How do you like that?
You seem very relieved.
Well, my mom and my grandmother, they all live in long, nice, healthy lives, so...
That's right.
This is the irony of it.
We think we have to clean it with, you know, a little bit of water and some soap.
How effective do you think soap is compared to heating the thing to 500 degrees?
Right?
You incinerate any bacteria that could be living on there.
You kill any viruses.
You don't have to wash cast-iron pans.
Your mom was right.
You knew that already.
They usually are.
But I think this is a big bit of wisdom for us to pick up.
The things that really matter are heating it up to clean it.
So, you don't want to use soap for sure.
And there's some other little tricks here that we've learned a little bit about.
Please don't put it in the dishwasher, obviously, if you're not using soap.
But if it does get a little dirty, you can take a little bit of kosher salt on there and just scrub it with that just to get the grudu that's left out.
And then when you're done, you've got to really dry it well.
Otherwise, it'll rust.
And to really make sure it never rusts, put a little oil on there.
Just a thin coat of oil.
And that'll make sure your pans will last for a long time.
It keeps all the flavor in it.
So now you can share wisdom with each other.
You know what?
You guys are so good about this.
Here are little gifts for you.
Oh, thank you.
You all have your own.
It's the absolute second gift.
Close yourself to the breakfast.
There we are.
Alright, next, myth or fact, cast iron pans add iron to your diet.
What do you guys think about that?
You think it adds iron to your diet?
You have the smartest audience in television.
It's a fact!
In fact, I recommend cooking in cast iron pans to my patients all the time, and for a bunch of reasons.
First of all, you get iron in without having to use the pills, which is good because that way you don't get constipated.
It also, I think, tastes pretty good.
So let me show you exactly how much your iron levels can spike if you use foods, different kinds of foods, in a cast iron pan.
If you take scrambled eggs, which are good, have a little bit of iron already, you'll actually bump up your iron in the food by three milligrams, which is a lot.
How about something like beef stew that's naturally high in iron?
Again, something you probably should have if your blood counts a little bit low.
It also rose three milligrams in iron content.
Again, a huge difference.
And take something that is just wonderful, like spaghetti sauce.
It's got a little acid in it.
The iron content jumped five milligrams after being heated in cast iron pants.
So this is a great tool.
Doctors use it all the time.
You should use it in your lives as well.
Instead of taking the iron pills, if you can use it this way, you'll get away without the constipation.
Finally, myth or fact?
You think you have to season the pan before you use it.
When you first buy it, you think you need to season it.
A little more mixed opinion here.
Well, I asked Chef James Brissillon from the Institute of Culinary Education to come join us.
He's live backstage in our Oz Test Kitchen to reveal the truth behind this myth.
Chef James, is it true or false?
It's true.
You have to season your cast iron before you use it.
So walk us through.
How do you do it?
Okay, so here's what you're going to do.
We've got a brand new cast iron right here, ready to go.
You can see it's kind of a lighter color.
You want to get some oil.
You can use canola oil, vegetable oil, even flaxseed oil.
Works great.
And you're going to take one of your old kitchen rags and really soak it with that oil.
So that when you wipe that pan, you see we're putting a nice layer of oil all around the inside of the pan.
And then, this is important, don't forget to flip it over and rub the outside of the pan as well.
The bottom can rust and that's just, you know, going to cause you problems later on.
We get that really well coated with the oil all the way around.
And then we're going to take this and put it down in the oven.
So that goes into the oven for 45 minutes to an hour at about 250 degrees.
After that, you're going to pull it out and you're going to start to darken in color.
You're going to wipe it again with the oil.
All the way around, inside, outside.
Get it nicely coated.
You want to do this four to six times.
As much time as you have, Do it every hour.
Take it out.
Wipe it down.
But the good news is you only have to do this once.
If you take care of your pan properly with all those tips we just talked about, not using soap, scrubbing it with the salt, this is going to last.
And the more you use your cast iron, the more you're going to build this up.
So you keep going with it.
Keep cooking with it.
And you're going to get this beautiful dark color on it.
And that's ready to go.
Jeff James, thank you for helping with that myth.
I appreciate it.
We'll be right back.
Coming up next, it's the special sauce that's got a kick and health benefits that you never knew.
And it's hotter than ever.
Find out why this amazing condiment has become a number one food trend and how it can help you to lose weight.
Next.
Charlie Sheen sets the record straight.
I did an experiment with a gentleman who was making very extreme claims.
It went bad fast.
He responds to the doctor who told him he was cured.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
We'll be right back.
I am just as obsessed with Sriracha as you are.
It is the special sauce that's helped spark a billion dollar industry.
Now, if you don't know what all the fuss is about, you will after this because I'm going to reveal the new research about the health benefits of this food that you never knew.
It's important because it's actually cool stuff.
So let's talk about why I love it so much.
First of all, it's linked to an increased amount of longevity.
New studies show that folks who eat spicy foods at least once a day have a lower risk of mortality.
So you got that going for you.
Which is sort of nice.
Then you find that it is good for your heart.
It may help lower your bad cholesterol.
And then, of course, because it's hot, it can rev up your metabolism.
They all go together.
They all make sense.
Sriracha connoisseur Randy Clemons is here.
Now, just you know a little bit about Randy.
He started using it almost 20 years ago.
He actually used to have this license plate.
Look at this.
Sriracha on his plate.
Purposely misspelled it, and they wrote two cookbooks on it where she spelled sriracha correctly.
So what makes the hot sauce sriracha?
Well, sriracha is a garlicky fermented hot sauce that originated in a small seaside town in Thailand called sriracha.
It's a style of hot sauce.
Sriracha?
There is.
I've been.
I've been twice.
It's pretty neat.
And getting to have sriracha in sriracha was pretty cool.
But I've seen it pop up all over TV, all over food magazines, and it's actually even been spotted on the International Space Station.
So even astronauts are demanding more flavor in space.
So I wasn't sure that was true, but here's an actual picture.
There it is, the International Space Station.
There's the sriracha sauce.
See it there?
I mean, who would have thought?
Yeah, you can't go without it.
You gotta have it.
Part of the reason I wanted to have you on, besides that you are a true connoisseur of this sriracha, is that you help yourself by using it to lose weight.
Yeah, actually, well about five and a half years ago I switched to a vegetarian diet, which works really well for me.
Oh my goodness, there you are five years ago.
Yeah, about 80 pounds ago.
So you really feel that some of your weight loss is because you're using sriracha on lighting foods?
Well, I think spicy food in general and what you said just a few moments ago about the metabolism boost and things like that, I would certainly credit it with some of it, sure.
Come on over, let's talk about what makes the sauce actually healthy.
So these are the main ingredients.
If you don't mind, walk us through what you think is the key part of sriracha.
Well, red jalapenos are key, and so the big brand here in the U.S., they actually use fresh chilies only.
But really great nutritional powerhouse, as is garlic.
Garlic is antibacterial, antiviral, helps raise good cholesterol, lower bad cholesterol.
So you're getting a really, really nice balance of flavor and good for you in every bite.
So, I've learned something about you in rehearsal that I want to share with everybody else.
You know, we have this day-off diet that I'm so proud about.
But from now on, I'm going to ask people to get a tattoo to really prove they're into the day-off diet.
Look what you have.
Randy has tattooed his arm with sriracha sauce ingredients, which happen to be all the things we talk about on the day-off diet.
You got, what is that?
Well, there's garlic here, and I've got an artichoke and some asparagus here, but I love food, and this is just something that kind of reminds me to keep cooking and to eat healthy and to put good things in my body.
Love it on eggs, love it on potatoes, love it on avocados, and those are three of my favorite things to have at breakfast time, but also soups.
Especially if you're having a cream-based soup or something like that, that fat will help cut a lot of this heat as well, so you're still getting a lot of the flavor and, of course, the health benefits, but it's not gonna overpower your tongue.
I'm proud of you for your 80 pounds.
Thank you, man.
I appreciate it.
And the sriracha.
Thank you.
You can find Randy's favorite spicy sriracha recipes at DrOz.com.
We'll be right back.
February on The Dr. Oz Show.
What's next for Charlie Sheen?
Jamie Lynn Siegler speaks out on her secret battle with MS and the truth behind America's biggest foods on The Dr. Oz Show.
When it comes to an avocado, I have a type, and it is ripe.
Just look at this avocado food porn.
Avocados, they continue to go viral.
They're everywhere.
You love them on toast.
You love them in sandwiches.
Mmm.
On salads.
You know what?
Even just playing with a spoon, which is how I love them.
Look at all that delicious, ripe, healthy fat.
It's all yours!
But there's nothing worse than having a hankering for some homemade guac.
And when you cut into the avocado, what do you get?
You just bought it.
It is so hard.
It's like a rock.
It's just not ripe.
You wasted your time.
Who here, to avoid that crisis, squeezes the avocado just a little bit to see if it's ripe?
Hands up.
Naughty, naughty people.
When you actually squeeze an avocado, you bruise it.
So I've got a better way to see if that avocado may be brown on the inside or perfectly green and ready to eat.
And you know what?
It all comes down to the stem.
Pay attention, you're going to see a lot of avocados.
I've got three avocados here.
There's no way you can tell the difference, unless you really dig your fingers into it, which one is perfectly ripe, which one is not ripe, which one is overly ripe.
So they all look similar.
It comes down to the stem.
See the stems?
They're all next to each other.
If it's not ripe yet, like this one, you push on this little thing, the stem, and nothing happens.
It doesn't come off.
It's stuck there.
You really have to pry it off to get it off.
That means it's not ripe yet.
You're not buying this one.
You're wasting your time.
You won't be able to tell the stone from the fruit.
It's going to taste all the same, right?
If the stem comes off really easily...
See?
Actually, that popped off.
I didn't even push it.
When it pops off like that...
Oh my goodness.
And you see the bottom?
See how it's brown and dark?
That means it's going to be black or brown on the inside as well.
Do not choose this one.
By the way, look at this.
You can sort of tell when I push on it that it's not the one for you.
But you don't want to figure that out in the wrong place.
Now, here's the beautiful idea.
If you pull off the stump, and it's just a little difficult to get it off like that, and watch it tumble out.
You see how it's sort of greenish?
It's a little bit yellowish, but mostly greenish.
Then you have yourself a perfect avocado.
Now, just to test my theory, Let's make this avocado open itself up for us.
And when you do that, you're going to find something really cool, a perfect avocado.
This is the hack the next time you're ready to make guacamole.
So I'm going to put this avocado infographic on my Pinterest page, including a handy color chart to help you choose the best one, what you share for your friends before anyone brings over guacamole for the next taco night.
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