OXO Fought Back Against the Black Spatula Panic. People Defected Anyway
As social media amplifies alarmist headlines, cookware manufacturers try to meet shifting consumer preferences while not giving disputed claims credence.
Kitchen utensils are put to the test at OXO’s facility in New York City.
Photographer: Dina Litovsky for Bloomberg BusinessweekThe first headlines were unambiguous: “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula. It’s probably leaching chemicals into your cooking oil,” wrote the Atlantic in late October. Six weeks later, the New York Times softened the tone in a wellness column: “Do I Really Need to Throw Out My Black Plastic Spatula?” Last month, R&D World weighed in with its own take: “Pull those black plastic spatulas out of the trash,” it said, dubbing the recent media hype “black spatulageddon.”
There’s perhaps no US brand with more at stake in this debate than OXO. The beloved maker of no-frills kitchen essentials—which Euromonitor International Ltd. estimates sells about 1 in every 12 US kitchen utensils—is famous for its signature black Good Grips handles, invented in 1990 by a husband trying to make a vegetable peeler with a more ergonomic handle for his wife, for her arthritis. Although the company also sells plenty of wood and silicone items, OXO’s popular coated spoons and tongs became a kind of shorthand for “plastic tools” throughout the latest cookware hullabaloo, which kicked off in the fall when a since-corrected study in the scientific journal Chemosphere showed concerning levels of cancer-causing flame retardants in certain recycled black plastics.