I thought people in many long-living cultures often cook with high temperature oil, and not just the street food wok cooking. There is bad chemistry that can happen with other food components at high temperatures but what is the problem with oil itself?
At too high a temperature oil will smoke and burn, leaving toxic components in both the oil and in the air.
My point is that the temperature necessary to cause this oil toxicity, is lower than what you need to make Teflon toxic. Teflon becomes toxic at temperature FAR above any cooking process (unless you eat charcoal).
i.e. if you cook normally and don't burn things Teflon is obviously fine, if you do burn things you have bigger things to worry about than the Teflon, since the other stuff will kill you first.
I get your point, but what I am saying is that if you are not careful, you can easily overheat empty teflon-coated pan on an induction stove and create toxic fumes, no oil required.
And you don't even have to forget about the pan. Just setting the stove to high temperature when the pan is cold can quickly create superheated spots due to the way induction works (the temperature sensor is hidden and so it "lags" a bit).
Obviously, if you're careful, always start with a low power, wait for the pan (and stove top) to heat up, then gradually increase power, you'll be fine.
With a stainless stell pan, the worse that could happen is the bottom of the pan might warp. But there is no toxic hazard.
It's completely unnecessary to heat as cautiously as you describe. Even the worst performing induction burner is not going to heat the pan hot enough unless you do it deliberately, or just completely forget it.
Also, maybe you do it differently, but I put the oil in before heating - so if I had stainless, with oil, heated in your "unsafe" manner I would have toxic smoke in the air long before I would have fumes from Teflon. Meaning avoiding Teflon isn't helping you in any way at all.
Of course in actuality there's simply no issue, induction does not perform as badly as you describe. Go ahead and heat at full power and simply cook, it will work fine and not overheat.
I think you vastly underestimate the power of induction burners. They quickly concentrate a lot of energy in a small space. Mine came with a warning to always start at 60% power at most, so that's why I am so adamant about it.
I fully understand that this may just be the manufacturer covering his, um, behind. But I am not going to risk it.
So that would mean you can't put in oil either before heating the pan and checking the temperature. Are you then advocating for people not to cook with oil?
I thought people in many long-living cultures often cook with high temperature oil, and not just the street food wok cooking. There is bad chemistry that can happen with other food components at high temperatures but what is the problem with oil itself?