Brainwashed with Stoves

A few weeks ago I read something on the Internet and thought - "wow that person has lost it" - it looked from my perception that someone was believing in something I couldn't fathom or was actually lying.

On the flip side of that - a discussion came up with some friends about stoves. I made a comment that I wish I had a gas stove to upgrade my electric coil one from. A different friend called out that I was brainwashed from decades of media pushes to entice me into wanting a gas stove.

The friend pushed and asked why I wanted one - I mentioned it seemed quicker to cook and cooler than electric. I didn't really have a solid reason outside of seemingly being cooler than electric. That friend tossed me a YouTube video and told me to watch it.

It was a 21 minute video, but I ignored the video for a solid few months until I was debating replacing the stove in my house. Throughout the last 5 years I had replaced a broken and leaking dishwasher and fridge so I was only one appliance away from having a modern appliances in the kitchen.

The video was interesting as it went through a few chapters of:

• The gas advertising industry
• Natural gas vs electric
• Health aspect
• Induction

As I watched the video a few things stood out to me starting with the fact that research showed most Americans could care less if their furnace or water heater was gas or electric. However when it came to the stove people cared a lot about having a gas stove. The video suggests this was from massive campaigns to pull on emotions targeted in advertising in any medium from TV to the internet.

I don't have to draw on any research to know that growing up I wanted a gas stove because we had one and it was fancy. Perhaps it was decades of advertising subliminally convincing me and family that we needed gas. Maybe it was the mark of being successful, because I went into college and had appliances that were probably older than I was and yearned for the gas. I can remember that era from a June 2014 photo I have of my first solo apartment.

The point of this photo isn't to see a collection of vodka above the fridge on a Nexus 5 camera, but instead see an old electric coil stove in 2014. This stove was terrible and most times I was trying to boil some water for pasta while it smelled like the oven itself was burning with a weird metallic smell.

No wonder gas stoves had the argument for being cleaner, cheaper and faster when compared to that. Especially when you consider electric was probably still mainly obtained from burning coal. Yet this video made an interesting point that gas stoves account for such a small percent of the usage and heavy duty gas products don't hold much weight with consumers on preference.

This table helps show that cooking accounts for basically 2% of the usage of gas in an average gas home. The gas companies have probably discovered that if people don't have strong opinions on the mechanism to power their living space & water all the advertising must have to be spent on convincing on the part that does.

It is probably why this wonderful "Cookin' With Gas" music video came to be.

Now jokes aside - I'm saying goodbye to my stove and moving on to induction. I thought I wanted a gas stove, but after a good amount of research I no longer want one. The largest contributing factor is that I don't have a gas hookup for full transparency, but I was happy to break down a mental perceived brainwashing in my head.

Walking through a store and messing with induction stoves was a fun experience. Burners that were on, but not hot to the touch. Water boiling so fast it seemed unreal and predefined cooking settings to hold ingredients at scheduled temps. This was futuristic engineering that didn't require an open flame spewing whatever toxins into the air.

Of course moving to induction requires induction compatible cookware, but the test for that is relatively easy only requiring a magnet. Out of my 5 pans 4 were compatible so Alyson helped out with a little gift.

The new stove hasn't arrived yet, but soon we will be cooking with the power of magnets and induction. The brainwashing of the gas industry will no longer work on me.