My guest is Rich Bergstrom from Ceramcor, makers of Xtrema Ceramic Cookware, the cookware I use every day. For 23 years Rich worked for and represented Corning Glass Works, considered the finest ceramics company in the world—makers of Corning Ware cookware, Pyrex bakeware and Corelle dinnerware. It was during these years he worked wit many wonderful people who helped to shape and mold his love for the glass ceramics business. In October of 2004, three years after his tenure with Corning ended, Rich received an unsolicited e-mail from Asia asking if he would be interested in a new high temperature ceramic material that could go on top of the stove and under the broiler, a product that would surpass the cooking performance and benefits of the original Corning Ware (the original Corning Ware manufacturing facility in Martinsburg, WV was closed and dismantled in 2002. Corning Ware is still being marketed today by World Kitchen but the product is now being made of stoneware and not the patented Pyro-Ceram material that made Corning Ware so recognizable). That single e-mail became the catalyst for three additional years of research, testing and product development, which led to the introduction of Xtrema cookware In February of 2007. Their vision is to make Xtrema products the healthiest for you and our planet. We’ll talk about the toxic exposures in various types of cookware and what Ceramcor is doing to make the safest cookware. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/xtrema-cookware

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Cookware – What’s Toxic and What’s Not

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Rich Bergstrom

Date of Broadcast: November 24, 2014 (May 30, 2013)

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. Yes, the toxic chemicals are all around in consumer products we use every day, in our environment, in our homes. But we don’t have to be exposed to them. We don’t have to get pricked from them. We can choose non-toxic products. We can choose to remove toxic things from our homes and toxic chemicals from our bodies and live the happy fulfilling product lives that we want. And that’s what this show is about.

It’s Thursday, May 30th 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. Today, we’re going to talk about cookware, which is actually one of my most frequently asked questions. People want to know what they should cook in. There’s a lot of information about toxic chemicals in cookware, which we’re going to talk about today, but there’s also safe dinner ware (safe cookware, I should say).

But before I get to my guest, I just want to tell you a little story about my experience with cooking. I’ve been cooking many, many years since I’ve been six years old and I used to cook a lot of foods that weren’t actually good for me and I’ve eaten a lot of junk food in my life.

But several years ago, I decided that I was going to go for one month only eating food that I cooked myself and that I was not going to eat any packaged foods or go to any restaurants or eat any take-out, not even from the natural food store, but that I would only eat food that I cooked myself.

I consider my health to be pretty good, but the difference to my health after that month was just stunning in terms of how I felt, then energy that I had and some of my minor annoying symptoms went away and it made such an impression on me that I continued to cook and cook and cook and so of course, you need cookware (unless you’re on a raw diet of course).
But recently, I’ve been very, very busy and haven’t had my usual time to prepare my own food. And so I’ve been eating outside and sneaking back in. I’ve noticed even in a short of period of time that my health was not good as when I cooked on my own.

So this is one of the reasons why it’s so important to have good cookware, to be buying fresh ingredients and to know how to cook, to know how to put together tasty dishes that you want to eat.

So today my guest is Rich Bergstrom from Ceramcor, makers of Xtrema Ceramic Cookware, which is my favorite cookware and the cookware that I use every day. It’s made from ceramic material through and through. Thanks for being with us, Rich.

RICH BERGSTROM: Hi, Debra. It’s a pleasure being on your show again. You’re one of my favorite people. I know we’ve had a relationship for the last four or five years and I’m a big proponent of what you’ve done. I’m just glad to be on the show.

DEBRA: Thank you! I’m really glad to have you too. I should say, when Rich said, “I’m glad to be on your show again,” I actually had an earlier version a few years ago of Toxic Free Talk Radio and this is now a new version. So if you’re looking online for another show with Rich as guest, it’s not there. So we’re just going to start over.

But yes, I’ve known Rich – haven’t we’ve known each other almost since the beginning of your company?

RICH BERGSTROM: Yes, the company, I started it in 2004 with the testing of this new ceramic material, but didn’t really launch the company until 2008 and at that time was when our relationship started.

DEBRA: Yes, yes. And I am very happy to be recommending your cookware and using it every day.

Well, let’s start with just having you tell us what made you interested in creating healthy cookware? Why is that important to you?

RICH BERGSTROM: I guess it was by accident. I worked for Corning consumer products started in 1978. They were the manufacturer of Corning Ware, Vision Cookware, Corelle and Pyrex Ovenware. I had a 23-year work experience with them. So I grew up in the ceramics business and all my cooking has always been with Corning Ware.

And then Corning sold their company in 1997 and they stopped making the Corning Ware material. But what was interesting about Corning Ware is that is a glass ceramics. So the one key factor of glass is it’s completely non-toxic, it’s somewhat durable, but it doesn’t heat very well. And when we started this company, when I started looking at different materials that would work well with a stove, that led me to Asia where they’ve had a 5000-year history working with ceramics. I was fortunate enough to work with several scientists and engineers over there that developed a new type of ceramic material unlike Corning Ware.

A glass ceramic actually retracts the heat. It doesn’t absorb energy. So we needed to make inorganic ceramic compound and minerals that could be mixed together and make a cookware that would absorb heat similar to metal cookware.

It took us three years. And in 2008, we were able to come out with a product that was selling now called Xtrema. What makes this so exciting – and I didn’t know this at the time because we want to come up with a ceramic material that would also go on a microwave or go on a steamer oven, would go on to a broiler, refrigerator, freezer and go to the table similar to Corning Ware. And having worked in the restaurant business many years in college, I know in the backend, what they call where food is prepared, all of the chefs and the prep people work with either stainless steel or aluminum cookware, yet on their front end or where their food is served, everything is served on either porcelain or stoneware ceramic plates.
And so the question is why do you cook on metal and why do you serve on ceramic? The reason is metal is very durable and therefore, it can take the abuse in the industrial kitchen in a restaurant, but yet, they’re not serving on metal cookware.

So I said, “You know what? There’s got to be a reason for that. So I found a laboratory in Pennsylvania. In 2007, we started testing various types of metal cookware. There’s a standardized test that they do for extracting lead and heavy metals.

And there’s another test that I invented. The laboratory, they do this with all different types of products and the results that we found is pretty astounding, that most metal cookware, even quality stainless steel, when they performed this testing would prove that was actually leeching chromium or nickel or iron or aluminum or copper into the food during the cooking process. We weren’t even looking for that. We just thought it might be something to test.

When I saw those results, a light went off and I said I wanted to contact Dr. Mercola who is a big proponent of healthy living just like you are, but he was selling a line of cast iron cookware. I tested his cookware as well and I found out that it wasn’t as healthy as he thought it was because nobody has ever tested metal cookware.

So I developed a relationship with Dr. Mercola. We also make the cookware for Dr. Mercola. We’re very proud of that relationship. He’s been very good for our business. He believes in non-toxic cookware and he also believes in ceramic cookware.

So from my relationship with Dr. Mercola and then getting involved with you, we changed the whole focus of our business to healthy ceramic cooking, as well as versatility.
So since that timeframe, what has been really interesting is there had been a lot of studies. If you look on our website (and you’re a big proponent of this too), there’s a tremendous amount of information available on our website not by us, by other people who are experts in the field who have tested the toxicity of metal leeching in the food and some of the ramifications that can have on your autoimmune system.

Dr. Bernard who was just on Dr. Oz did a wonderful show about Alzheimer’s, how 50% of people, by the time they’re 85 years of age will end up with Alzheimer’s and most of that is from the leeching of heavy metal from cookware and the food that we eat.

And actually, there’s a video on our website. I think it’s like a 30-minute video that you can watch, the consumers can watch. This is something that we’re finding out from a lot of other experts in the field. We like to think we’re the experts in making high quality cookware, but we’re not the experts when it comes to testing and leeching of heavy metals. We leave that to the scientists and the people who…

DEBRA: I’m sorry, Rich. I need to interrupt because if I don’t, they’re going to cut you off. We need to go to our commercial break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and we’ll be back in a moment.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’re here today with my guest, Richard Bergstrom from Ceramcore, makers of Xtrema Ceramic Cookware, the cookware that I use every day.

And Rich, before the break, you were talking about studies on your website that show testing. I’m on your website and I’m not finding them, can you tell me where to look for them?

RICH BERGSTROM: Yeah, you have to go – and I don’t have my website in front of me. You go to the ‘products’ section or ‘about us’. And then it goes down, you scroll down and you’ll see ‘testing’. It should say ‘testing of Xtrema products’ and it will show you various reports. There’s a whole bunch of PDF files of testing of not only our products, but then all of our competitors’ products. We don’t list their names. We don’t believe in doing that, but we show the various types of cookware whether it’s cast iron or aluminum or stainless steel.

DEBRA: I see it now. Anybody who’s listening who wants to go see this at their website, across the top, there’s a menu. It says ‘about’. And then when you hover over that, another menu comes down. You want to click on ‘product testing’. That takes you to a page that has an index of articles. Here’s one about the making of seal, hidden dangers in metal cookware and – let’s see, stainless steel drink ware (that’s by me), Alzheimer’s disease, ‘Is Your Cookware Killing You?’. There’s lots of stuff to read on this page.

Also, you have a lot of wonderful information on your website. I’m looking here in the left-hand column. There’s a little graphic that was like a piece of film. It says ‘watch the Xtrema videos’. When you go there, there’s information about – you can watch videos about heating up pans and they’re not melting and things like that. There’s actually quite a lot of interesting information you have here.

So I think we were talking about that you wanted to make a material that gave the qualities of being able to hold the heat like metal that you wanted to have, but also be clean like glass. I’d just like to interject for those who don’t know that glass is made from silica, which is basically glass. It’s an abundant material. It’s completely non-toxic.

I do know that sometimes, toxic things can be mixed with ceramics to have various characteristics like lead and [inaudible 00:16:52] and things like that. But your ceramic is designed to be non-toxic chemicals, no metals. It’s just ceramic, correct?

RICH BERGSTROM: Right. And what makes a difference with our product, when you manufacture different types of metal, first of all, there are a lot of companies out there today. They say that their cookware is green. It might be a metal. It might be aluminum cookware, stainless steel. And now, a lot of people are getting away from the non-stick coatings that people are familiar with. Teflon and POFA and PTFE, those are different types of polymers that were put in chemicals/synthetics that they would put on metal cookware that would make it non-stick so it would be easy to clean.

And now, a lot of companies have gone to a new type of ceramic coating on metal cookware, which does not have PTFE or POFA. It’s called the sol gel coating, but it is a synthetic material…

DEBRA: Yeah, tell us more about this. Tell us more about this because I see different things being labeled in different ways. A lot of them will say it’s a ceramic coating, but it doesn’t really say what it is.

RICH BERGSTROM: Yes.

DEBRA: And every time I see some green-ish name on a skillet, I look for it in a store and I touch it. Some of them feel very much like plastics. Some of the feel very slippery. I mentioned Green Courmet a lot. [Inaudible 00:18:33] Green Gourmet, I have a couple of their skillets. But what I have found over time is that the shininess and the slipperiness of the finish wears down. And yours does not. Your pan is the same as it was the day I bought it.

When I first got my Green Gourmet pans, I thought, “Oh, I can cook eggs in this without fats. It would just slide around in the pan. It was very easy. And after a couple of years, I had to spread a bunch of butter on the pan as any other pan. It really loses its effectiveness.

So do tell us about these other ceramic finishes.

RICH BERGSTROM: Okay. So what is happening – and that’s a great question. You put up a perfect example. These new ceramic coatings have only been on the market for about three to four years where the Teflon coatings, believe it or not, the PTFE coatings, it’s a plastic type polymer that is sprayed on. Those coatings are basically safe unless you heat them over 500°. And that’s when they break down and it causes toxicity. And a lot of people unfortunately cook on higher heat than they should. So those coatings have a tendency to break down.
But the original Teflon coatings that were on most of the cookware had a life expectancy of up about three to four years. These new ceramics coatings that had just been coming in the last two to three years, in all honestly (and a lot of manufacturers won’t tell you this, but I know because I’ve been involved with some of these coating companies), they really only last about six months because they’re so new.

The problem is when you’re dealing with ceramics, ceramic material is harder than steel. What I mean by that, it’s not necessarily stronger, but the material itself is harder. So when you put a ceramic coating, which is a hard material on metal, which is softer than ceramic, it’s not going to bond as well and it’s not going to last as long.

So when you talk with these companies and you ask them what is sol gel, it’s a silicon-type base synthetic mixed with ceramic material, but you can’t really get a true answer as to what that coating is made of.
I think the difference between what we’re doing at Ceramcor with other cookware companies is the accountability.

DEBRA: And I need to interrupt you again, I’m sorry because we have to go to break, but we’ll talk more about that after this message. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Rich Bergstrom from Ceramcor, makers of Xtrema Ceramic Cookware. You can go to their website at Xtrema.com. That begins with an x, x-t-r-e-m-a .com. This is the cookware that I use every day and I’m extremely happy with it. I’ve been using it for I guess five years. That’s as long since I got it, when you started the company. It is in good a condition today as the day I got it. I’m extremely happy with it.

So before the break, Rich, you were telling us about the difference between the ceramic coatings on metal cookware that are being used today and your Xtrema Cookware.

RICH BERGSTROM: Yes. And my point was that we get a lot of calls from consumers in emails. They ask us about our product and then we point them on our website where we have our test results. We believe in total transparency and accountability. That’s why we probably have more information on our website about testing than all of the cookware manufacturers can find. We just believe that it’s better to tell the customer exactly how our product is made, why we believe our product is green as opposed to metal cookware.

The manufacturing of metal (which is a necessary product and we understand that), when there’s a metal manufacturing company that makes cookware that says their product is green because they put a ceramic coating on it would be like me saying there’s a toxic landfill and I put a green bamboo fence around the landfill, that does not make the landfill green. That just makes the fence green.

So if there’s a metal manufacturer out there and they call their cookware Green Pan or ‘green’, that really is scamming because that’s taking a ceramic coating that has not been tested or proven and they’re putting that on metal cookware, which is not green.

So there’s a lot of misinformation about green and the manufacturing of ceramics, all different types of ceramics – local potters, the dinnerware companies – that is green because they use natural fired kilns. There’s no toxicity, no pollution to the environment, to the worker in ceramics factories as opposed to the manufacturing of metal.

So there’s a lot of misinformation. And probably the one thing that really upset me the most when we were finding out about the difference between ceramics and metal cookware – I spend a lot of times with various doctors, I’ve had some health issues like yourself and I’ve had a lot of heavy metal in my system that I had to detox several times.

What I find out is that there are a lot of doctors when I would go to the doctor with my wife, the doctor would say, “Well, if you’re low in iron, you should cook in cast iron because the iron that you have from your metal cookware would be good for you.” I say, “Well, that doesn’t really kind of make a lot of sense to me.” I said, “There’s got to be some documentation on that.”
And then having done some testing and asking doctors and really finding out the truth that there’s really two different kinds of iron – and really, cooking in cast iron is the biggest fallacy. The truth is that iron comes in ferrous and ferric form and our bodies cannot assimilate the ferric iron from cast iron cookware.

Actually, what the term the doctors use is it’s not ‘bioavailable’ meaning when you need healthy food, it goes to your cellular level and its value, it becomes bioavailable and it’s actually good for you. But if you cook your food in toxic metal cookware, if it’s a poor quality aluminum cookware or cast iron, that metal is absorbed into the food, then you absorb it into your body. It can actually do damage if you have autoimmune problems.

A lot of people really don’t have the information about how toxic some of the poor quality aluminum cookware or cast iron cookware can be. And actually, you get the metal taste in your food.

DEBRA: Yes, yes.

RICH BERGSTROM: That doesn’t happen when you cook with ceramics because there’s no metal in ceramics and it’s made of inorganic, natural minerals, so there’ll be no leeching into your food during the whole cooking process.

DEBRA: It fills the food. One of the things that I noticed being somebody who loves to cook is that I have tried different types of cookware and food taste different. You can cook exactly the same food in different cookware made of different materials and it will taste different.

I especially found that out when I was trying to figure out what to cook my eggs in. I was very impressed by your cookware, it was very neutral. It doesn’t give any metallic taste or any taste at all of anything. It just is the food. It feels good.

I also want to make sure that we mention – I’m kind of going off on a tangent here. I want to make sure that we mention that ceramics have thousands of years of history. Isn’t ceramics like making a pot and cooking something in it, isn’t that one of the first forms of cookware, ceramics?

RICH BERGSTROM: Yes. You go back 8000 years. If you go back to biblical times, actually, the first pots that they cooked in was clay. And then they went through the bronze age and metal. But clay, obviously, is an abundant material. From that, the pottery goes dating back thousands of years. Mainly in China, you can trace it back to 8000 years going back to the Ming and the Tang dynasty. So the finest ceramics in the world to this day with an 8000-year history come from Asia even more so than in Europe or the United States. The United States has only really had about 150-year history in the manufacturing of ceramics.

So a lot of people ask us, “Rich, why do you make your products in China as opposed to the United States?”…

DEBRA: I was going to ask you that…

RICH BERGSTROM: And I would like to say, “We could make it in the United States, but unfortunately, there’s only three ceramics factories left in the United States that make dinnerware.” I’ve had conversations with them. They just don’t have the materials, they do not have the artisans, the craftsmen that can make our products.

And so there’s really no alternative than to make our product in China because it takes about 20-21 days. Our products are all handmade. The artisans in China had been making ceramics going back 8000 years. So the technology, the materials, the way the product is made, the manufacturing facilities are more conducive to making our product in Asia than it would be in the United States.

It would be cost-prohibitive for me to be able to train place and take years. And the factory, it would take me probably ten years to get a factory that would be able to make the same quality product that we make in our factory in China. So that’s why our product is made where it is.

DEBRA: Oh, good. We’re going to take another break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest is Rich Bergstrom from Ceramcor. We’re talking about Xtrema Ceramic Cookware. We’ll be back in a few minutes.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. I’m here today with my guest, Rich Bergstrom from Ceramcore, makers of Xtrema Ceramic Cookware. Their website is Xtrema.com. That starts with the letter x-t-r-e-m-a .com.

If you haven’t ever seen their cookware, go to their website and take a look at it because it’s absolutely beautiful. It really does go from oven to table as a beautiful serving piece in addition to being healthy. I just love the way the food tastes that comes out of these pots. It’s delicious.

So Rich, tell us briefly how the cookware is made. You start with what and then what happens?

RICH BERGSTROM: Basically, it’s like all stonework type material. Any type of ceramic material, you take minerals from the earth crust. That could be – and I’m going to throw around some terms that are not very familiar. It’s [inaudible 00:39:43], it’s clay, it’s sand, it’s quarterite, petalite. They are inorganic minerals from the earth’s crust that are mixed in different combinations. And the formula that we use gives it its thermal properties.

So our cookware can withstand temperatures up to 2700°F. So that means if you’re using our cookware on top of a stove and you put it in a sink that it’s not going to crack. That’s very similar to Corning Ware, which is very famous for that as well.

So it had that very good thermal properties where it can go from one extreme to the other. That became very important to us because people, you could take it from the stove, then bring it to the – it’s attractive enough to go to the kitchen table. And then if you wanted, you can put it in a freezer. You wouldn’t have to worry about transporting it to a different type of vessel to go from the stove to the freezer. It could all be done in one.

So our cookware became very versatile and multi-functional. And now in various parts of Asia, the type of cooking that they’re doing there, they do a lot of steam cooking. So in the United States, steam or ovens are starting to become popular, but even more so in Asia, so our cookware is absolutely wonderful. If you use a steamer oven, it’s actually perfect.

I just found out last year that the no. 1 appliance sold in the United States last year are toaster ovens. So we’re coming out with different shapes and sizes that will fit a toaster oven because why turn on a big oven at 450° when they can heat your whole kitchen when you can get a high-quality toaster oven for $49 to $69. You can cook a 12” pizza or one quarter or two quarter casserole. You don’t have to heat up your whole kitchen. It’s much more functional.

So we’re designing products that would go on to toaster ovens and then if you have a microwave – some people like to use a microwave, some people don’t. I prefer using the top of the stove, the oven or a toaster oven more so than a microwave, but there are people that do water-based cooking in a microwave, they find that our products work extremely well there. You wouldn’t put a metal product in a microwave oven. And if you put it in a toaster oven, once that metal heats up, then you start pulling some of the metal components into your food.

So when you heat metal, you’re actually extracting the metal into your food. But when you cook on ceramics (and not only our cookware, but any other ceramic cookware or bake ware), you’re not going to pull any heavy metals into the food because it’s basically non-porous. It doesn’t have any metals in it. So it’s a much healthier product.

And like you said – and you’re an expert on that. You know more about toxicity than probably anybody in this country…

DEBRA: Thank you.

RICH BERGSTROM: …and have written a lot about that and you’re an expert. That’s why we found you and we sort of worked together because we found as we developed this product, we were going after customers who are very educated about health, were concerned about their health, wanted to live longer, were very educated about nutrition and working out and exercising. Those are the people that are attracted to ceramic cooking because they’re very much aware of their environment, their health and the whole toxicity of our planet and how we live.
So it’s been really eye-opening for us because when we started this business, we just wanted to make a product that we thought was going to be pretty cool, that was neat, that could work on top of a stove. It moved us in a completely different directions to go whole health and green aspect of our cookware. We’ve been really blessed with a really good following of people that really understand what we’re trying to do. We just appreciate all the support that the people like yourself and others have given us over the last four or five years.

DEBRA: Well, I’m very happy that you’re there because I do think that this is – if you look at the whole, entire picture of the product, I do think it’s the greenest product in terms of cookware and the least toxic product for people who are just eating and are not even concerned about the environment, but just eating healthy food if you’re going to cook your food. This is the safest and healthiest way to do it that I’ve been able to determine.

I just want to tell the listeners some of the different pieces you have available and which pieces I have and how useful they are.

I have the – I don’t know, 12” skillet. That’s a pretty big one.

RICH BERGSTROM: Yes, yes.

DEBRA: And then I also have three nested pots. And they do nest. I put them in a drawer and they don’t take up space. And then I also have the wok, which I totally adore. I would say that if people could only buy one piece of your cookware, I would recommend the wok because it could be a skillet or it could be a pot. It’s big enough that I can make soup in it. You can make a one pot meal and yet, you can also stir fry in it. It’s the most versatile one.

I make beans every week. I bake beans every week. I just cook the beans. I work at home, so I can just leave something in the oven all day. I just start them in the morning and cook the beans in and cover them with water. I put them in the oven, 300°. Four or five hours later, I’ve got perfectly good beans. It’s really nice to just –

They’re easy to clean. I wouldn’t call these non-stick because to me, a non-stick pan means that you can cook anything in them and it won’t stick. Eggs will stick. You need to use some kind of butter, oil or whatever you want in order to cook scrambled eggs or fried eggs or whatever.

RICH BERGSTROM: Yes, yes.

DEBRA: But I can tell you that if you just let the pan sit in water for a couple of minutes, they’re extremely easy to clean. It’s not like a metal pan or pot where you have to scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub.

They don’t scratch. So I don’t have ‘scratch that pot’. Really, I keep saying this over and over, but it’s an impressive thing that my pot and pans look exactly that they looked the first day that I got them.

I also have a – what do you call it? A teapottle?

RICH BERGSTROM: Yes, we call it a ‘teapottle’. It’s a funny kind of a name. There’s tea wares and there’s tea pots. In the serving of tea, normally, people would use a metal or stainless steel teapot. And then they would pour that into a porcelain or a ceramic teapot to serve in. That’s basically how people would serve tea. They wouldn’t serve it right from the metal teapot. So we call it a ‘teapottle’ because it’s a teapot and…

DEBRA: …and a kettle.

RICH BERGSTROM: …both the teapot and the kettle. It’s two combined. We kind of came up with that catchy phrase. Actually, the first company to make a teapot that can go on top of the stove and boil water out of ceramic and not crack (because you couldn’t do that with porcelain or stoneware) and really with boiling water…

DEBRA: [inaudible 00:48:06]

RICH BERGSTROM: Most of the teapots out there are really made of a low gauge aluminum, a real thin gauge aluminum. That’s probably the most toxic thing to boil water in. Not only that, you’re heating, you’re boiling the water and then you’re extracting the metal into your water and then you’re going to make a green tea, a healthy white or black tea and suddenly, you have water that has a heavy metal in it, it kind of defeats the purpose of drinking tea, which is a very healthy product to drink.

DEBRA: I would agree.

RICH BERGSTROM: So with ceramics, you don’t have an issue because there’s no leeching.

DEBRA: Yes. And so your teapot just sits on my shelf. It’s very clean and hygienic. And when I want to make my green tea, which is about every day, I just fill it up and it very quickly boils the water. I just drop my tea bags in. And then I make iced green tea. And then I have my iced green tea for the rest of the day.

I’m sorry to say we’re at the end of our time. This time has just flown by. It’s been so interesting to be talking about all these cookware. It really is something that I think every kitchen – if a family wants to be healthy, we need healthy cookware. We need to be cooking ourselves. We need to know how to cook and enjoy cooking. I certainly have been enjoying cooking with my Xtrema cookware.

So go to Xtrema.com – it’s x-t-r-e-m-a – and take a look. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is – they’re going to cut us off. I’m sorry.

RICH BERGSTROM: If I could say one thing, if you go to our website, you can get an extra 10% discount by using your name, DEBRA10. You get an additional 10% discount.

DEBRA: Okay, thanks. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about thriving in a toxic world.