Where did you read that?
Maybe no name stuff has poor coating, but Teflon are probably the biggest name in non-stick here in the UK - and the Vogue professional pans I'm using are
restaurant grade '3 times Telflon Platinum coating'. At $25 or less for a medium saute pan, they're well priced and hard wearing as they're designed for commercial kitchens.
When I say cheap or mid range, I'm talking about shopping smart for good priced high quality gear - as opposed to spending $150 on a Fissler non stick saute pan that's only going to last a couple of years.
It's better to give a mid range pan an early retirement rather than keep using a high end non-stick after it's coating has started to come off, just because you spent $$$$ on it.
Edit: I notice that you've recently gone all steel, and I agree with that approach for most things. Eggs and batters are easier to do on non-stick, but for everyday stuff including meat I find myself using steel instead. If you're making any sort of sauce after sauteing meat, the deglazing liquid pretty effectively cleans the pan anyway.
i'll start from last: as i mentioned earlier, going all non-stick required a bit of re-learning to cook some dishes (including eggs), but eventually it's fine and i really like my cookware now and i basically don't see any need for non-stick, although i still have some of my old gear (solid aluminum brand stuff).
at the end, the major difference is that non-stick has to be just a little bit more 'hands-on' and requires more continuous attention.
as far as the toxic plastics that might get released, i had read a lot of reviews articles on the subject when i was deciding what to get to replace my ageing set of non-stick (including actual studies), and basically there are two issues with old non-stick coatings.
One is the material used to make the non-stick 'stick' to the pan, which is different from brand to brand even if the coating itself is the same (teflon for example). what is used will affect how easily and under what conditions the coating comes off (e.g. temperature).
the second is the non-stick material itself. teflon is probably the most common and used to be the norm but is not used muchanymore, because while it is mostly 'safe' under normal usage conditions, it becomes toxic when it is 'overheated' or when it starts peeling off, because it releases the fluoropolymers it's made of.
the catch is that that temperature (typically 500°F) is reached fairly easily in spots under 'normal' conditions, especially if the pans are the cheaper, thin ones, but it still can be achieved with the thicker aluminum ones that disperse heat well (like the ones I had), in particular as they age.
the higher the temperature, the more nasty the toxic gases/plastics released. higher temperature are easily reached with 'dry' pans, which is why you should always have 'something' cooking in the pan and not pre-heat.
actually the least problematic are the bits/flakes, because they are just going to go through, and because as they mix with the food, their temp stays lower. However, a chipped pan is also more likely to release the toxic compounds.
In addition, not all brands use teflon (which is proprietary) and other compounds might have worse or better characteristics.
i think the latest generation products avoid teflon and teflon-like material alltogether and use ceramic coatings. this should avoid most (all?) the toxicity aspects, but still eventually chip off, and you need to replace them, because food cooks unevenly in scratched pans.
in all we are not talking of drop-dead toxicity, but given that we were going to have to buy new stuff anyways, and with young kids around , we decided to byte the stainless-steel bullet and go all no-non-stick.
on a related note, for similar reason i now don't heat/re-heat anything in any plastics anymore (even supposedly safe ones), especially in the microwave, but always transfer to glass/ceramic and then re-transfer if necessary.
It takes a while (I measure time in Ice Ages
