The Case for Induction Cooking, Versus Gas Stoves

Robert Osborne grew anxious about dinner when his Brooklyn co-op board put the kibosh on a plan to move a gas line for his kitchen renovation. How could Mr. Osborne, a math teacher, cook his favorite dishes like skillet chicken with caramelized mushrooms and onions if he couldn’t do it over the classic blue-orange blaze of a gas stove?

Like many of the more than 40 million home cooks in the United States with gas stoves, Mr. Osborne considered his to be essential, a nonnegotiable part of his kitchen that, had it not been for the co-op board, he would have kept.

After all, cooking over the open fire of a gas stove sparks something primal and intuitive in our lizard brains. Watching flames leap over the sides of a pan and lick the bone of a sizzling lamb chop is visceral and sensual, two adjectives you might not associate with the sleek ceramic surface of the Samsung induction range Mr. Osborne ended up installing instead.

But for all the sexiness of cooking with gas (a concept bolstered by aggressive lobbying and advertising from the natural gas industry), it has been shown to be catastrophic for the environment, emitting potent greenhouse gases like methane into the atmosphere. Worse, a recent study demonstrated that 75 percent of those oven emissions occur when the stove is off.

The noxious fumes that get trapped in our homes are also harmful, especially for children.

Brady Seals, a manager at RMI, a nonprofit focused on sustainability, and an author of a study examining the health effects of gas stoves, said indoor nitrogen dioxide levels can spike quickly, reaching hazardous levels in the amount of time it takes to bake a cake.