Microwaving

[Danny]

http://wokeuptoday.blogspot.com/2007/03/microwaving-my-food.html

 

[grumpy]

Dan,

I hope not. I would not survive without the MW and the George Foreman grill.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Who knows what the truth is. Heating your food is known to kill germs. So whether you do it in a pan or in a microwave you are killing germs.

Some claim that microwaving alters the chemical make-up of the food to your detriment.

If you Google on something like "Microwave food health danger" you get hundreds of hits on sites such as...

http://www.relfe.com/microwave.html

many of the referenced website are not rigorous scientific studies.

Personally, I microwave almost every day

and as yet there is absolutely no sign of ongoing dain bramage...

 

[donheff]

Da da da da, da da da da,.... That is the Twilight Zone music in case you didn't recognize it.

 

[REWahoo]

...this lady jumped up and out of the blue started berating us to make sure we didn't use a microwave on our food.

I figure she got spooked when she accidentally left her tinfoil hat in the microwave...

 

[Martha]

Whatever happened to the proposals about irradiating food?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Whatever happened to the proposals about irradiating food?

Proposals

Those aren't proposals anymore. Food that you eat is routinely irradiated to kill bugs and bacteria and to extend the shelf life.

Irradiation is a electromagnetic bombardment process like microwaving. However irradiation does not operate at the resonance frequency(ies) of water (like a microwave oven does) so that the food doesn't cook.

There is a similar discussion about the health effects of the irradiation process.

Don't worry though - The government approved it- so it must be safe

 

[Martha]

I must have missed the memo.

 

[Nords]

I must have missed the memo.

I think a few hundred rem gives the food that elusive je ne sais quoi, an effervescent bite with an impertinent aftertaste. But submariners have never allowed to store food in the reactor compartment-- not even coffee-- only an occasional watchstander for limited periods of time.

The irradiation irritates the heck out of the cockroaches but doesn't activate (make radioactive) the food itself. It's just like a neutron bomb-- kills all the living things but you can move right in afterward. But I'm sure that those forward-thinking wild-eyed scientists at Tyson Foods are dying to get their hands on a more humane chicken-killer.

As for the microwave ovens, they could leak if their door or casing was damaged but it's highly unlikely. A portable RF meter tuned to 2.4 GHz will tell you what's happening, and I'm sure that Sharper Image or Radio Shack will sell you all the home-testing equipment you could want.

We just traded in our 20-year-old GE Spacemaker II for a Magic Chef microwave convection oven. Now there's more POWER! It cooks in about 75% of the time it takes a conventional microwave, for those days when you just can't stand to spend five minutes reheating leftovers the old-fashioned way...

 

[WanderALot]

It's funny you mentioned this because DW has been on an anti-microwave kick lately. She quoted some studies that talk about how microwaving food changes the chemistry of the food and also increases cholesterol. All of the websites seem to quote the same things!

DW uses the oven to reheat leftovers now. :

 

[MasterBlaster]

What is left out of the discussion is the level of risk. So I pose some questions for those that don't want to risk a microwave ??

Is eating microwaved food more or less dangerous than taking 3 airplane trips per year ?

Is eating microwaved food more or less dangerous than living in a stone or brick house.

Is eating microwaved food more or less dangerous than sitting for hours in front of a computer monitor or a TV?? If your monitor is a CRT type then electrons are being beemed into your brain.

What is less healthy - eating a microwaved salmon steak or chicken leg versus having an Ice-Cream cone ?

and for what it's worth - Oven and stovetop heating is not safe either. When food chars it produces carcinogenic compounds.

 

[Khan]

What is left out of the discussion is the level of risk. So I pose some questions for those that don't want to risk a microwave ??

Is eating microwaved food more or less dangerous than taking 3 airplane trips per year ?

Is eating microwaved food more or less dangerous than living in a stone or brick house.

Is eating microwaved food more or less dangerous than sitting for hours in front of a computer monitor or a TV?? If your monitor is a CRT type then electrons are being beemed into your brain.

What is less healthy - eating a microwaved salmon steak or chicken leg versus having an Ice-Cream cone ?

and for what it's worth - Oven and stovetop heating is not safe either. When food chars it produces carcinogenic compounds.

What about spending 50+ hours per week less than 3 feet from a computer/monitor, under fluorescent lights, in a room without windows, with your BP rising and your butt getting larger?

 

[Baxter]

We just traded in our 20-year-old GE Spacemaker II for a Magic Chef microwave convection oven. Now there's more POWER! It cooks in about 75% of the time it takes a conventional microwave, for those days when you just can't stand to spend five minutes reheating leftovers the old-fashioned way...

Moe: Oh, boy! The deep fryer's here. Heh heh, I got it used from
the navy. You can flash-fry a buffalo in forty seconds.
Homer: Forty seconds? Aww, but I want it now!

 

[wallygator69]

What about spending 50+ hours per week less than 3 feet from a computer/monitor, under fluorescent lights, in a room without windows, with your BP rising and your butt getting larger?

Or renting space in the basment of a dentist office with hundreds of Xrays a week taking place in a town with lots of Radon, but I was only gonna be there a year or two...(turned out to be 5 but what the hell..

Living is a terminal condition..

w

 

[bpp]

Infrared irradiation = conventional oven
Microwave irradiation = microwave oven
Gamma ray irradiation = food irradiator

All forms of electromagnetic radiation -- i.e., merely different frequencies of light -- though the effects are qualitatively different. In particular, the food irradiator is more akin to shooting little bullets into the food to break up chemical bonds (killing bacteria in the process) without heating up the food significantly, while the other two are used to explicitly heat up the food. Though both of the other two methods do, of course, create chemical changes in the food (which is kind of the definition of cooking as opposed to merely heating up...)

What about spending 50+ hours per week less than 3 feet from a computer/monitor, under fluorescent lights, in a room without windows, with your BP rising and your butt getting larger?

On the bright side, if your butt becomes too big to be able to be forced into a microwave, well, that's one less thing to have to worry about.

 

[Patrick]

What about spending 50+ hours per week less than 3 feet from a computer/monitor, under fluorescent lights, in a room without windows, with your BP rising and your butt getting larger?

It's very hazardous for the chair.

 

[youbet]

Microwave cooking is the product of depraved neo-con minds. Purchasing the microwave ovens supports ugly American corporations and fosters slave-like working conditions in the countries where their manufacture is outsourced. Eating food prepared in the microwave slowly but surely turns bright liberal minds into hard-hearted conservative blocks of wood and eventually into wingnut, rightwing, religious right drones.

Eat at your own risk.

I read it on the internet.

 

[sgeeeee]

Microwave cooking is the product of depraved neo-con minds. . . .

This is complete nonsense.

It's Clinton's fault.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

Or renting space in the basment of a dentist office with hundreds of Xrays a week taking place in a town with lots of Radon, but I was only gonna be there a year or two...(turned out to be 5 but what the hell..

Living is a terminal condition..

w

Yep, and I had fish for dinner 2 nights in a row. God only knows what's
in 'em. On the bright side, I didn't use the microwave.

JG

 

[lazyday]

Since microwaves use weird electromagnetic radiation and the microwave itself doesn't get hot like a regular oven should, they freak some people out, and they spread lore about the dangers.

A microwave may actually be safer than a regular oven, which I suspect in some cases is more likely to cause chemical changes to food that can cause health problems.

the problem: http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2003/103_food.html
example of help from microwave: http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.asp?docID=535802

(there may be better links, just did a really quick search.)

Similar to the microwave fears, people are freaked out by strange chemical artificial sweetners. If you feed rats an absurdly huge amount of saccarine, they get cancer. Nutrasweet crosses the blood-brain barrier, which sounds frightning. Now, some people are afraid of all artificial sweetners, and blame Splenda for their ailments. Especially headache, which is about the most common health problem there is.
They would also blame any new backaches on Splenda, except it doesn't sound quite right to say that Splenda caused your backache. But "Splenda caused my headaches" sounds believable.

I expect that Splenda is pretty safe, and is much safer to eat than corn syrup, sugar, or stevia.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

It's funny you mentioned this because DW has been on an anti-microwave kick lately. She quoted some studies that talk about how microwaving food changes the chemistry of the food and also increases cholesterol. All of the websites seem to quote the same things!

DW uses the oven to reheat leftovers now. :

Interesting. Doing my own cooking, I never ever use the oven at all,
just the microwave, the stovetop and a charcoal grill. Probably ingesting
tons of carcinogens. Wouldn't be surprised if this place had asbestos
insulation, radon in the foundation and mercury in the well water.
Arghhhhhhhhhhh.

JG

 

[My Dream]

Nords, have you tried the Convection part of your Microwave yet?

 

[TromboneAl]

I propose we do a safety test of microwave ovens. We'll install them in, say 150 million homes and let people use them for about 30 years and see if there are any health effects.

Next we can test electric blankets, nutrasweet, high power lines, cell phones, and computer monitors.

 

[justin]

I propose we do a safety test of microwave ovens. We'll install them in, say 150 million homes and let people use them for about 30 years and see if there are any health effects.

Actually, you'd need to install a placebo broken microwave in 75 million homes (the "control group") that didn't heat anything at all. Then compare the health effects of this group with the health effects of the 75 million homes with microwaves that work. For science...

 

[Danny]

College son had a beatup 25 year old JCPenney Microwave last year...he and roommate would set it and run to the dorm hall and wait til finished....