Nuking your food - microwaves wreak destruction
One of the most "overlooked" health hazards may be nuking your food - throwing those tv dinners into the microwave just for a minute - for convenience sake, but watch out - you may be poisoning yourself. At the very least, you will be eating inferior food.
It's a question of frequency, actually. Traditional sources of cooking heat use waves of infrared frequency to heat food, either directly as in grilling or broiling, or indirectly, where the fire heats a pot and the pot, by direct contact, heats the food. This mostly indirect heat, but also the infrared waves of your grill or open wood fire treat the food gently. What we believe is heat, a more or less agitated "shaking" of the molecules, is induced in a slow but time-tested way.
Microwaves are different. They cannot heat up all materials. Their violent bursts of vibration in the longer microwave frequency band can only heat certain molecules, water being one of them. In fact, while infrared waves induce a "shaking" motion, microwaves actually scramble our food, they induce rotation! So no indirect heating is possible, because hard materials resist rotation of their molecules. Your pot or plate stay cold. All a microwave oven can do is scramble your food. It's violent thrashing motion tears at the molecules while heating them.
A question comes to mind: Are we running a large-scale human experiment to find the health effects of microwave cooking? Maybe not, maybe we're just being nuked. You decide - here is a good article on La Leva di Archimede's site - The Proven Dangers of Microwaves.
What got me going on this was this week's HSI Baltimore e-alert, which follows here:
In a recent New Yorker magazine I saw a cartoon that gave me a chuckle. A woman was removing a plate of food from a microwave oven while calling into the living room, "Come and get it while the molecules are still vibrating!"
It's an amusing cartoon, but it also serves as a reminder that microwaved food is not quite the same as food cooked with a conventional heating source. And that's a concern for an HSI member named Deloris who starts off a thread titled "Microwave Ovens" with a reference to an item she received from natural medical physician, Dr. Joseph Mercola. Deloris writes: "I've been using one for over 25 years, as I imagine many folks have. If he's right then its only my vitamins and supplements that have kept me alive as I've lost a lot of nutrition in reheated food, not to mention possibility of getting cancer. Any comments on this subject?"
ARE there! Deloris' question has prompted almost 50 responses so far. And no surprise, given how common microwave usage is. Dr. Mercola's article is just one of several he's written about microwaves, and the information he covers can be generally summed up with this comment from HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., that appeared in the e-Alert "Micro Management" (1/27/03):
"What studies exist are all bad news for microwaving - they universally describe some type of damage. One study showed breakdown of vitamin B-12 to inactive degradation products in microwaved foods. There's also a problem with release of potentially toxic molecules into the food from packaging designed to help brown food during microwaving. This includes items such as pizza, French fries, waffles, popcorn and breaded fish."
These unsettling details about microwaves generally go from bad to worse. A member named Brenda says that a source she trusts states that "microwaving food makes vitamins and minerals useless in every food tested and reduces the bioavalibility of many nutrients. It also renders meat proteins worthless."
But the effect of microwaves on food is only part of the problem. As a member named Bob points out: "One feature overlooked about Microwaves (Radar ovens) is that they all leak around the door edges. Measuring with a Gauss meter, every microwave I tested leaked, and was detectable up to six feet away. Microwaves cause the body cells to heat up slightly, and whether this is dangerous or not is not yet known. If you insist on using your microwave, please always move at least six feet away while it is running."
And as you might expect, this conversation eventually comes around to the subject of microwaving popcorn. A member named Liz offers this age-old technique for those who may have forgotten
or those who may have grown up knowing only the microwave variety of popcorn: "When I was a kid (before the days of microwaves or air poppers) my mom would heat a little oil or butter in the bottom of a pan on the stove, add the popcorn, put a lid on it, and shake the pan across the burner. Soon the popping would start and we would have popcorn that the salt would stick to. You have to keep the pan moving so the popcorn doesn't scorch."And to that a member named Mari offers this pan-popping tip: "Coconut oil for popcorn--the only way to go--the best!"
The "Microwave Ovens" thread covers a wide range of topics related to cooking and nutrition and is a must-read for anyone who's ever suspected that microwaving just might not be the healthiest way to cook.
See also related:June Russell's Health Facts"Microwaving — Dangers to Your Food and You?
MICROWAVE COOKING is Killing You!
By Stephanie Relfe B.Sc. (Syd.)
Microwave cooking is one of the most important causes of ill health. It is
certainly one of the most ignored.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Friday December 12 2003
updated on Saturday December 4 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/12/12/nuking_your_food_microwaves_wreak_destruction.htm
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