Does eating microwaved food harm our health?
By petspets
@petspets (476)
Antarctica
October 16, 2006 9:04am CST
I use the microwave oven to heat up food for many years. After reading the article in the link, my husband
thinks we should use a combination of convection and microwave ( a cycle of convection and microwave ) to heat up the food. I have not made up my mind on what to do next? What are your views?
http://WWW.rense.com/general70/microwaved.htm
I hope this link is active.
2 people like this
14 responses
@gabs8513 (48686)
• United Kingdom
20 Dec 06
Hi there Pets
Yes I agree with your Husband there I have got one and have had for many years and they are great you can cook anything in them even your Roast you use them for baking to so go for it Girl and get one
Hugs to you
@petspets (476)
• Antarctica
14 Feb 07
My really old microwave oven conked out two weeks ago. It was nearly 20 years old. Now we have another used microwave convection oven. My nephew and his wife did not want it because the door is a little loose and the microwaves are leaking out of it. It is not a problem since we are not using microwaves to heat up food.
It took getting used to a slower way of heating up the food again. Lol.
@wolfie34 (26771)
• United Kingdom
11 Feb 07
I must admit I do not like food cooked in the microwave and if it was up to me I wouldn't have a microwave but I live with my housemate who's the main cook and insisted on getting one, so much so that he bought it himself, I refused to contribute because I refused point blank to eat anything cooked or heated up in the microwave. We all have our preferences, I don't do it because of the possible danger, it's just I don't like microwaved food.
1 person likes this
@petspets (476)
• Antarctica
11 Feb 07
I have read on the Internet that microwaved food is not as tasty as food cooked the conventional way. I could not detect the difference but my husband could and he is now really anti-microwaved food. I don't have a problem with that. The microwave oven is so convenient in the fast paced lives of this world that it is a common appliance in the US.
@funnysis (2619)
• United States
20 Dec 06
If you are only heating up food in it I cook baked potatoes in mine and its fine I think what people get worried about is the radation generated by the microwave but it doesn't harm you that I am aware of and I have ask my doctor and she says it is fine,I would use your judgement on it the government doesn't really know what will hurt you and what will they don't spend enough time worry about things like that.
1 person likes this
@KrazyKlingon (5005)
• United States
24 Jan 07
Well, I have not encountered any problems yet. I have been known to actually cook enough for at least 2 or 3 meals using my regular stove (enough rice for maybe 3 servings), & a few meals worth of something else. Then after eating one meal, I put the rest away. Then when I want another meal of what I had left over, I use a microwave to heat that up. Being that it is already cooked, I only need to use the microwave to heat it, not cook it from the beginning.
1 person likes this
@petspets (476)
• Antarctica
25 Jan 07
I do not want you to have any problems at all. It was very convenient using the microwave oven to nuke the food and warm up the drinks. My husband is now so worried that we no longer use it to heat up our food. We are now using the stove to warm up our soups, meats with gravy and convection to warm up the roasts.
@edm2000eclipse (1003)
• United States
29 Oct 06
well anything that can be done in the microwave can be done in the over i believe. it just takes longer. i probably will still use the microwave.
1 person likes this
@anjalisk2005 (1492)
• India
21 Dec 06
some hardcore evidences ::
In Comparative Study of Food Prepared Conventionally and in the Microwave Oven, published by Raum & Zelt in 1992, at 3(2): 43, it states
"A basic hypothesis of natural medicine states that the introduction into the human body of molecules and energies, to which it is not accustomed, is much more likely to cause harm than good.
Microwaved food contains both molecules and energies not present in food cooked in the way humans have been cooking food since the discovery of fire. Microwave energy from the sun and other stars is direct current based.
Artificially produced microwaves, including those in ovens, are produced from alternating current and force a billion or more polarity reversals per second in every food molecule they hit.
Production of unnatural molecules is inevitable. Naturally occurring amino acids have been observed to undergo isomeric changes (changes in shape morphing) as well as transformation into toxic forms, under the impact of microwaves produced in ovens.
One short-term study found significant and disturbing changes in the blood of individuals consuming microwaved milk and vegetables. Eight volunteers ate various combinations of the same foods cooked different ways.
All foods that were processed through the microwave ovens caused changes in the blood of the volunteers. Hemoglobin levels decreased and over all white cell levels and cholesterol levels increased. Lymphocytes decreased.
Luminescent (light-emitting) bacteria were employed to detect energetic changes in the blood. Significant increases were found in the luminescence of these bacteria when exposed to blood serum obtained after the consumption of microwaved food."
The Swiss clinical study
Dr. Hans Ulrich Hertel, who is now retired, worked as a food scientist for many years with one of the major Swiss food companies that do business on a global scale. A few years ago, he was fired from his job for questioning certain processing procedures that denatured the food.
In 1991, he and a Lausanne University professor published a research paper indicating that food cooked in microwave ovens could pose a greater risk to health than food cooked by conventional means.
An article also appeared in issue 19 of the Journal Franz Weber in which it was stated that the consumption of food cooked in microwave ovens had cancerous effects on the blood. The research paper itself followed the article. On the cover of the magazine there was a picture of the Grim Reaper holding a microwave oven in one of his hands.
Dr. Hertel was the first scientist to conceive and carry out a quality clinical study on the effects microwaved nutrients have on the blood and physiology of the human body.
His small but well controlled study showed the degenerative force produced in microwave ovens and the food processed in them. The scientific conclusion showed that microwave cooking changed the nutrients in the food; and, changes took place in the participants' blood that could cause deterioration in the human system.
Hertel's scientific study was done along with Dr. Bernard H. Blanc of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University Institute for Biochemistry.
In intervals of two to five days, the volunteers in the study received one of the following food variants on an empty stomach: (1) raw milk; (2) the same milk conventionally cooked; (3) pasteurized milk; (4) the same raw milks cooked in a microwave oven; (5) raw vegetables from an organic farm; (6) the same vegetables cooked conventionally; (7) the same vegetables frozen and defrosted in a microwave oven; and (8) the same vegetables cooked in the microwave oven.
Once the volunteers were isolated, blood samples were taken from every volunteer immediately before eating. Then, blood samples were taken at defined intervals after eating from the above milk or vegetable preparations.
Significant changes were discovered in the blood samples from the intervals following the foods cooked in the microwave oven. These changes included a decrease in all hemoglobin and cholesterol values, especially the ratio of HDL (good cholesterol) and LDL (bad cholesterol) values.
Lymphocytes (white blood cells) showed a more distinct short-term decrease following the intake of microwaved food than after the intake of all the other variants. Each of these indicators pointed to degeneration.
Additionally, there was a highly significant association between the amount of microwave energy in the test foods and the luminous power of luminescent bacteria exposed to serum from test persons who ate that food.
This led Dr. Hertel to the conclusion that such technically derived energies may, indeed, be passed along to man inductively via eating microwaved food.
According to Dr. Hertel,
"Leukocytosis, which cannot be accounted for by normal daily deviations, is taken very seriously by hemotologists. Leukocytes are often signs of pathogenic effects on the living system, such as poisoning and cell damage.
The increase of leukocytes with the microwaved foods were more pronounced than with all the other variants. It appears that these marked increases were caused entirely by ingesting the microwaved substances.
This process is based on physical principles and has already been confirmed in the literature. The apparent additional energy exhibited by the luminescent bacteria was merely an extra confirmation.
There is extensive scientific literature concerning the hazardous effects of direct microwave radiation on living systems. It is astonishing, therefore, to realize how little effort has been taken to replace this detrimental technique of microwaves with technology more in accordance with nature.
Technically produced microwaves are based on the principle of alternating current. Atoms, molecules, and cells hit by this hard electromagnetic radiation are forced to reverse polarity 1-100 billion times a second.
There are no atoms, molecules or cells of any organic system able to withstand such a violent, destructive power for any extended period of time, not even in the low energy range of milliwatts.
Of all the natural substances - which are polar - the oxygen of water molecules reacts most sensitively. This is how microwave cooking heat is generated - friction from this violence in water molecules.
Structures of molecules are torn apart, molecules are forcefully deformed, called structural isomerism, and thus become impaired in quality. This is contrary to conventional heating of food where heat transfers convectionally from without to within.
Cooking by microwaves begins within the cells and molecules where water is present and where the energy is transformed into frictional heat.
In addition to the violent frictional heat effects, called thermic effects, there are also athermic effects which have hardly ever been taken into account. These athermic effects are not presently measurable, but they can also deform the structures of molecules and have qualitative consequences.
For example the weakening of cell membranes by microwaves is used in the field of gene altering technology. Because of the force involved, the cells are actually broken, thereby neutralizing the electrical potentials, the very life of the cells, between the outer and inner side of the cell membranes.
Impaired cells become easy prey for viruses, fungi and other microorganisms. The natural repair mechanisms are suppressed and cells are forced to adapt to a state of energy emergency - they switch from aerobic to anaerobic respiration. Instead of water and carbon dioxide, the cell poisons hydrogen peroxide and carbon monoxide are produced."
The same violent deformations that occur in our bodies, when we are directly exposed to radar or microwaves, also occur in the molecules of foods cooked in a microwave oven.
This radiation results in the destruction and deformation of food molecules. Microwaving also creates new compounds, called radiolytic compounds, which are unknown fusions not found in nature. Radiolytic compounds are created by molecular decomposition - decay - as a direct result of radiation.
1 person likes this
@meetsammy (578)
• India
21 Dec 06
well microwave is always beleived to be helpful....and it conserves all the nutrients while heating food....infact it gives food the fresh feel....i dont think it will be ever harmful...
@remaster74 (4064)
• Greece
21 Dec 06
I think microwave cannot harm you if you cook or heat your meals with it. They say you have to be out of the way if the microwave oven works.
@disvachic (10117)
• United States
22 Dec 06
I have been using a microwave for years to and haven't had any problems.