New Delhi, Nov. 30 -- Until recently, Bengaluru homemaker Rachna Mehra cooked almost everything in a lightweight aluminium kadai. But rising chatter about overheating and metal leaching pushed her toward cast iron-a switch she describes as "the first time I thought about what my pan is actually doing to the food." In Delhi, 29-year-old bachelor Amit Sharma packed away his aluminium pressure cooker after reading about leaching in acidic foods, choosing stainless steel instead.

These individual shifts are part of a broader rethinking underway in Indian households, where utensils once bought out of habit are now being evaluated for health, durability, and chemical exposure. Nonstick, aluminium, steel, cast iron, clay-materials that coexiste...