Microwave oven dangers

[firem3]

I had no idea there was any danger in using the microwave. I guess if it makes our lives more convenient it is most likely bad for us
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/microwave-ovens-the-proven-dangers.html

 

[Wannabefree]

Microwaving is an unnatural way of cooking. Maybe we should all think about doing away with them. I'm not sure whether this article is honest or not, but either way, I have thought about tossing mine. Anything worth cooking is worth cooking right Thanks for the article. It is very ineteresting.

 

[patandchickens]

I'm sorry, but, wowie. The person who wrote that article is so (possibly-intentionally) ignorant of what they are talking about that it is hard to even know where to start discussing it.

All I can say, without going completely "auuugh!" about it, is that an author using big words and scientific terminology is not necessarily the same at all as things meaning what the author SAYS they mean. Ahem.

Quite a lot of that article is either a) completely irrelevant to the issue of microwaved food, or b) generic to ANY cooking of food and applies as much or more to many other cooking methods such as grilling.

By all means, don't use a microwave if you don't want to, it's a personal choice.

But it should not be on the strength of that article. Which is a bunch of pretentious lying piffle. Sheesh.

Pat

 

[big brown horse]

My overhead microwave has been a great bread box for these last 2 years.

Personal choice based on many things...mostly because I LOVE to cook but also they scare me a little bit.

 

[Mackay]

Part of the deal when I got married was that when I moved in the honking microwave would be moved to the front lawn.. it disappeared in about 20 minutes.

I often felt guilty for giving it away when it should have gone to the trash... some ignorant person is still probably getting blasted from it.

In Russia microwaves are not sold. They are considered dangerous to the user from microwaves they emit ans well as the damage it does to food. We dont talk much about phytonutrients here,,,, different from vitamins and minerals but plant life is full if it and they sustains us... and they are the compounds in plant medicine that do the work. Well, our common foods have compounds that do work also.

Microwaves change those phyto-nutrients into foreign substances that our body is not accustomed to eating, not now and not in the last 10,000 years.... think of it in a similar way as eating GMO foods in concentrated form.

 

[Wifezilla]

http://www.snopes.com/science/microwave/plants.asp

 

[Wildsky]

We lived happily without one for the past year, however we recently purchased a tiny little cheapo one for warming rice bags and my coffee because it gets cold so dern fast.
I never cook food in it, food just tastes gross coming out of there. soggy soft veggies just don't rock my boat.

 

[Wannabefree]

I'm not even supposed to use a Crock Pot to cook DD's food, much less a microwave, but we still do heat things in it. Not that we couldn't use the stove, but well...it's just another stupid "convenience" thing. We're pampered

MSG is a natural result of the way proteins are broken down when cooking some things. Problem is...some folks, like DD, can't metabolize the broken down protein. Kind of like the difference between someone whose body can't process white flour, but can process WHOLE grains. It's a culinary pain in the butt really

Still thinking about tossing the darn thing. That is the part of the article that made me think...how it breaks down the food during cooking. DD still has some symptoms of her food intolerance even when we think we have excluded ALL MSG, both added, and naturally occuring during the cooking process. Maybe this is where it is coming from

 

[patandchickens]

In Russia microwaves are not sold.

Given Russian manufacturing standards of a lot of things, I would not trust a Russian-made microwave all that far, at least not in 1976, which is when microwave ovens were banned there. The Russians presumably realized that high quality control in door seals etc is important, and may have made the right call there :> (e.t.a. - although on second thought I suppose the real reason was probably more along the lines of why blue-jeans and color TVs were also banned during that general time period - western decadence! )

However please note that microwave ovens were legalized in Russia at least 20 years ago. So the above quoted statement is not, currently, even CORRECT.

And so what? Stevia is not approved in the US as a sweetener. <X> is not approved/sold in <countries Y and Z> for all sorts of reasons. This proves nothing.

They are considered dangerous to the user from microwaves they emit

Only a damaged microwave oven is emitting anything but noise. Really really. As long as you don't use highly-abused or umpty-years-old machines, or disable the door override and stick your head in there to microwave it, there is no exposure to anything harmful.

Microwaves change those phyto-nutrients into foreign substances that our body is not accustomed to eating

Yes, they can. You know why? Because microwaves HEAT the food, sometimes very hot very fast (like, in some places in a microwave, or if you do something unwise).

So do other methods of cooking. Like for instance grilling. Grilling is REAL good at cooking parts of food real hot real fast and creating chemical changes (in many cases of the same sorts that microwave ovens can cause). Also frying, specially the kind where you get a cast-iron frypan real hot and then put the food in it to sear the outside.

Sheesh, cooking is BY DEFINITION a whole suite of chemical changes in the molecules that make up yer food (Otherwise it would be called "mildly and carefully warming" )

So unless one is advocating a raw-only diet (and of course, some do; but cooking does some GOOD things for the nutritional content of some foods, too, so that whole issue is much larger), I think it is supremely disingenuous to suggest that microwaving is any much different than other methods of cooking.

I am surprised the article did not mention the oft-mentioned study that showed a decrease in nutrient content of broccoli microwaved vs steamed. A study in which they microwaved it in a WHOOOOOLE lotta water. So, yeah, obviously nutrients leached out, this is WHY it is better to steam things (in steamer, or in hardly any water in a microwave) than to boil them, and really says nothing about microwave cooking in particular

By all means avoid microwave ovens if it floats your boat, but at least it would be good to see people get the facts a bit straighter (and that article is really pretty eye-poppingly misleading).

Pat

 

[Wifezilla]

Hence my posting the snopes link