They cook the best too - a good carbon steel pan is worth its weight in gold. Non-stick is utter garbage in comparison - and you're cooking on plastic and eating pieces of the coating.
Food cooked on carbon steel or iron tastes so much better.
Food cooked on carbon steel or iron tastes so much better.
And with cast iron, you are cooking in random organic polymers and eating them. The patina of cast iron pans is random organic chemicals.
There are actually ceramic non-stick pans, in which case you'd be eating sand if I understand the concept correctly.
What that usually comes down to is to let your non-stick pan cool to room temperature before you run water over it, even if you like seeing all that steam. Also, you weren't expecting to sear meat with your nonstick anyway so don't slap a massive cold slab of meat on your unoiled non-stick either.