Why You Should Avoid Microwave Cooking

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, June, 2001

Is it possible that millions of people are ignorantly sacrificing their health in exchange for the convenience of microwave ovens? Over 90% of American homes have microwave ovens used for meal preparation. Because microwave ovens are so convenient and energy efficient, as compared to conventional ovens, very few homes or restaurants are without them. In general, people believe that whatever a microwave oven does to foods cooked in it doesn't have any negative effect on either the food or their bodies.

How do Microwave Ovens Work?

Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic energy, like light waves or radio waves, and occupy a part of the electromagnetic spectrum of power, or energy. Microwaves are very short waves of electromagnetic energy that travel at the speed of light.

Every microwave oven contains a magnetron, a tube in which electrons are affected by magnetic and electric fields in such a way as to produce micro wavelength radiation at about 2450 Mega Hertz (MHz) or 2.45 Giga Hertz (GHz). This microwave radiation interacts with the molecules in food. All wave energy changes polarity from positive to negative with each cycle of the wave. In microwaves, these polarity changes happen millions of times every second. Food molecules-especially the molecules of water -- have a positive and negative end in the same way a magnet has a north and a south polarity.

In commercial models, the oven has a power input of about 1000 watts of alternating current. As these microwaves generated from the magnetron bombard the food, they cause the polar molecules to rotate at the same frequency millions of times a second. All this agitation creates molecular friction, which heats up the food. The friction also causes substantial damage to the surrounding molecules, often tearing them apart or forcefully deforming them. The scientific name for this deformation is "structural isomerism."

By comparison, microwaves from the sun are based on principles of pulsed direct current (DC) that don't create frictional heat; microwave ovens use alternating current (AC) creating frictional heat. A microwave oven produces a spiked wavelength of energy with all the power going into only one narrow frequency of the energy spectrum. Energy from the sun operates in a wide frequency spectrum.

We've all been told that microwaving food is not the same as irradiating it (radiation "treatment"). The two processes are supposed to use completely different waves of energy and at different intensities. No FDA or government studies have proven current microwaving usage to be harmful, but we all know that the validity of studies can be -- and are sometimes deliberately -- limiting. Many of these studies are later proven to be inaccurate.

Mothers' Instincts Are Right

Many of us come from a generation where mothers and grandmothers have distrusted the modern "inside out" cooking they claimed was "not suitable" for most foods. My mother refused to even try baking anything in a microwave. She also didn't like the way a cup of coffee tasted when heated in a microwave oven. I have to fully agree and can't argue either fact. Her own common sense and instincts told her that there was no way microwave cooking could be natural nor make foods "taste the way they're supposed to." Reluctantly, even my mother succumbed to re-heating leftovers in a microwave due to her work schedule before she retired.

Many others feel the same way, but they're considered an "old-fashioned" minority dating back to before the 1970's when microwaves first overwhelmed the market. Like most young adults at the time, as microwave ovens became commonplace, I chose to ignore my mother's intuitive wisdom and joined the majority who believed microwave cooking was far too convenient to ever believe anything could be wrong with it. Chalk one up for mom's perception, because even though she didn't know the scientific, technical, or health reasons why, she just knew that microwave ovens were not good based on how foods tasted when they were cooked in them. She didn't like the way the texture of the microwaved food changed either.

Microwaves Unsafe for Baby's Milk

Dr. Lita Lee of Hawaii reported in the December 9, 1989 Lancet: "Microwaving baby formulas converted certain transamino acids into their synthetic isomers. Synthetic isomers, whether cisamino acids or trans-fatty acids, are not biologically active. Further, one of the amino acids, L-proline, was converted to its d-isomer, which is known to be neurotoxic (poisonous to the nervous system) and nephrotoxic (poisonous to the kidneys). It's bad enough that many babies are not nursed, but now they are given fake milk (baby formula) made even more toxic via microwaving."

Microwaved Blood Kills Patient

In 1991, there was a lawsuit in Oklahoma concerning the hospital use of a microwave oven to warm blood needed in a transfusion. The case involved a hip surgery patient who died from a simple blood transfusion. It seems the nurse had warmed the blood in a microwave oven. This tragedy makes it very apparent that there's much more to "heating" with microwaves than we've been led to believe. Blood for transfusions is routinely warmed, but not in microwave ovens. In the above case, the microwaving altered the blood and it killed the patient.