Surveys showed that most people had no preference for gas water heaters and furnaces over electric ones. So the gas companies found a different appliance to focus on. For decades, sleek industry campaigns have portrayed gas stoves [...] as a coveted symbol of class and sophistication
[...]
The sales pitches worked. The prevalence of gas stoves in new single-family American homes climbed from less than 30 percent during the 1970s to about 50 percent in 2019.
[...]
Beginning in the 1990s, the industry faced a new challenge: mounting evidence that burning gas indoors can contribute to serious health problems. [...]
Cooking is the No. 1 way you’re polluting your home.
You have more control over temperature on an induction cooktop than you have with a gas cooktop, but there is a learning curve. Samsung induction cooktops show a blue "virtual flame", which can help a new user visualize the amount of heat going to the pan.
I'm willing to concede that for what most people cook in the US or parts of Europe, the way most people cook in those places, gas or induction have a negligible difference. That's because most people in the global North can't cook for shit, and at best do some glorified reheating or some basic-ass
techniques. Have them change their ranges to induction, whatever.
But for professional kitchens or other kinds of cooking that billions of people use open flames for? Get outta here. You're going to tell the south American grandma who hasn't left her town and has cooked with gas her whole life that she's been brainwashed by the American oil and gas industry?
Nah, there are a lot of people in the global north who can cook their asses off. Sure, a lot can't, but cooking is a fundamental life skill and even colonists have culinary traditions.
No matter what, somebody must cook. More people in the global north are eating out, sure, but there are people cooking for them like AmericaDelendaEst, and those numbers add up. Increasingly, fewer can afford to eat out anyhow, and learning to cook at home has become an outright necessity for most.
Prepackaged ready-to-eat meals aren't as cheap as they used to be, and you can get tired of them very quickly too
You know, a pretty decent cause of mortality in poor countries is women cooking over wood fires in confined spaces. Combustion is just not good for you, there's really no way around it.
Also the idea that most people in the north can't cook well enough for their tools to matter is laughable. That's just your vulgar reaction to fetishism of high-class French cooking. What evidence could possibly support it? We can joke about the Brits eating like the Blitz is still going on but you can't set up an objective ranking of cuisines.