“I have been personally and professionally involved in nutrition for the last 40+ years and professionally involved in cellulite reduction for 24+ years and I can tell a non-sensical craze in either field when I see it, and air-fryers is one of them. Air-fryers are problematic in more ways than one, as I describe below, and definitely are not helpful for either skin ageing or cellulite - not to mention heart health and even endocrine balance.”
Air fryers are all the rage - for all the wrong reasons
Air fryers, skin aging and cellulite | In summary
Air-fried food may be better than normal fried food but it is still toxic and still causes ageing and cellulite
Forever chemicals and plastics in air fryers (and other cooking utensils): an endocrine (and environmental) time bomb
Ceramic and stainless steel air fryers and the issues of acrylamide, aldehydes, HCAs, PAHs, AGEs, ALEs, skin ageing and cellulite
The best solution is to rarely fry or cook at very high temperatures. But then again, such rare use does not justify buying an air fryer.
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Air fryers, skin aging and cellulite | In summary
Air fryers have become incredibly popular in UK kitchens, promising crispy, tasty food with less oil. While they are a step up from deep frying, they’re far from healthy. High-temperature cooking still creates harmful compounds like acrylamide, PAHs, and AGEs, which are linked to ageing, cellulite, and various diseases.
A bigger issue lies in what air fryers are made of. Most have cooking surfaces coated in plastics or “forever chemicals” like PFAS—substances that don’t break down and end up lingering in the body and the environment for decades. These chemicals have been linked to hormonal disruption, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and skin problems. Even BPA-free plastics aren’t much safer, as they still shed particles that can build up in organs and fat tissue.
Opting for ceramic or stainless steel air fryers is definitely better, but the problem of high-temperature cooking remains. Swapping slow cookers—one of the healthiest cooking methods—for air fryers is seen as a poor trade-off. It’s like replacing a walk in the park with a puff on a vape. It doesn’t make sense.
If fried food is only something to enjoy now and then, it might make more sense to just fry it the traditional way, using a bit of good-quality oil in a stainless steel pot. The food will likely taste better, and the occasional indulgence won’t do much harm. More importantly, it avoids loading your kitchen, body, and planet with unnecessary plastics and chemicals.
Air-fried food may be better than normal fried food but it is still toxic and still causes ageing and cellulite
Air fryers are now the third most-used appliance in UK kitchens after toasters and microwave ovens - and well ahead of conventional ovens. Air fryers owe their popularity to their promise of making fried food but without the excess oil.
Enjoying crispy fried food but without the oil: what not to like, right?
Sure, air fried food is better than normal oil fried too - no question about that. But there are lot of things not to like about the air fryer craze.
Firstly, although oil use is diminished, the oil that is used is still getting fried at very high temperatures. Plus food itself is also getting cooked at very high temperatures.
Secondly, and equally importantly, the vast majority of air fryers’ cooking surface is made of forever chemicals or plastics. These are both an environmental time bomb and an endocrine (hormonal) one - leading to cancer, diabetes, obesity, aging and yes, cellulite too.
Apparently people are throwing away their slow cookers and replacing them with air fryers, i.e. they replace the healthiest way of cooking with one of the most unhealthy ones. With air frying it is mainly forever chemicals and plastics that coat the cooking surfaces - and both end up inside the body.
Unfortunately, these days most people fry, boil, roast and even slow-cook in forever chemical coated utensils. However, more and more people now insist in ceramic or stainless steel-coated conventional cooking utensils.
Sure, a lot of people used to fry with oil, just like a lot of people used to smoke cigarettes. But just like replacing chain smoking with manic vaping, replacing oil frying with air frying is not such a huge improvement.
In fact, replacing a ceramic slow cooker (a cooking method used for millennia) with a forever chemical air fryer is definitely a step in the wrong direction. It is akin to replacing a walk down the park, as a pastime, with smoking. Not smart at all.
Forever chemicals and plastics in air fryers (and other cooking utensils): an endocrine (and environmental) time bomb
Forever chemicals is a term for a group of man-made chemicals called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), such as PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid, or C8), PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) and PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene). These chemicals are known for their persistence in the environment and in the bodies of humans and other organisms for hundreds and thousands of years.
Manufacturers try to convince us that the latest batch of PFAS are safer than before because they are more stable at high temperatures. However, there is always a residue of unstable forever chemicals in all modern coatings. Furthermore, the fact is that no substance is totally, completely stable, including stainless steel and ceramic.
The difference between stainless steel / ceramic and forever chemicals is that when some stainless steel or ceramic microparticles are unavoidably released during cooking or due to scrubbing and scraping, it will not be able to cause endocrine (hormonal) disruption in our bodies, neither will it stay an intact, alien to our body, chemical for hundreds/thousands of years, as forever chemicals do.
In fact, using cooking utensils coated with forever chemicals is an ethical issue, even if such chemicals are 100% stable during cooking (which they never are). All utensils reach their end of life after a few years and the environment is filled with non-biodegradable chemical junk. There is a huge difference between recycling a stainless steel pot and dumbing to landfill a forever chemical coated one.
The same comments about forever chemical coated air fryers and other utensils also apply to plastic coated ones. Even if a cooking device is promoted as BPA-free, it still contains plastics on its surface. And a lot of that plastic unavoidably ends up in our ovaries, testes, breasts, heart, brains and other organs (causing hormonal imbalance, diabetes, heart disease and obesity) and adipose tissue, blood vessels and skin (causing cellulite and water retention).
Ceramic and stainless steel air fryers and the issues of acrylamide, HCAs, PAHs, AGEs, ALEs, skin ageing and cellulite
What about using the more expensive ceramic or stainless steel coated air fryers? Aren’t they much better?
Sure they are. There is no comparison between stainless steel and ceramic on the one hand and plastic and PFAS on the other.
However, high temperature cooking remains high temperature cooking and still produces acrylamide, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH), Heterocyclic Amines (HCA), Aldehydes, Advanced Glycation End products (AGE) and Advanced Lipoxidation End products (ALE), which all lead to degenerative disease, skin ageing and cellulite.
Sure enough, frying and other methods of high temperature cooking produce tasty - but indeed unhealthy - foods.
The best solution is to rarely fry or cook at very high temperatures. But then again, such rare use does not justify buying an air fryer.
I am not saying here that we should never have fried food - air fried or oil fried - but to have such foods very rarely.
(Of course, if one wants to eat fried, smoked, broiled, charred, burned, smoked food every day - especially meat - it’s their choice. It’s still a free world out there - well, kinda... But then one will have to also accept all the health and aesthetic consequences of eating such food.)
So for such rare occasions of frying, buying an air fryer does not make any sense, with all the surface area occupied in the kitchen and all the expense (especially for the higher-end, ceramic/stainless steel ones).
In those cases, one can just fry conventionally with some quality oil, used only once, just a handful of times a year, in a stainless steel pot. Food will definitely be tastier than air fried and consuming such food once a month or every two months or so will not cause heart disease or cellulite.
Of course, if your kitchen is huge and money is not an object buying a higher-end ceramic / stainless steel air fryer is absolutely fine for frying these 6-12 times a year - as long as it doesn’t tempt you to use it every day at the expense of your stainless steel / ceramic slow cooker or good old casserole pot, oven roast dish, steamer, grill pan etc.
But for the love of God, do not load this Earth, as well as your ovaries, heart, brain, testes, kidneys, breasts, liver, blood vessels and, of course fat tissue, with more plastic or forever chemicals. Do your body and the planet a favour - please.
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