My wife and I are having a minor disagreement at present. She keeps sending me things from various sources that explain how microwave ovens do horrible things to the food we eat, even turning some harmless components into carcinogens. The health ramifications, if these articles are to believed, are extreme! However. I am the primary consumer of microwaved food in our household. I don't make medical decisions based on publications with "green", "earth" or "nature" in their title. But I also don't want to become riddled with cancer due to my taste for microwave burritos or Coles Bechamel Lasagne. So I wandered over to fda.gov and searched for information on microwave ovens. They make a few notes about making sure doors are sealed but nothing on the effects of consuming microwaved food. The Lancet makes no mention of microwave ovens at all that I can find, apart from a single line "microwave ovens are harmless" in an article about microwave radiation from mobile phones. So. My question is, are there any credible reports of microwave ovens being bad? Or that they're fine? A peer-reviewed medical journal would be ideal. Ta.
hehe, I think your wife should be more worried about the nutritional content of the Burrito and Lasagne than the effects of the Microwave
Yeah, well, that's outside the scope of this particular argument. Very interesting, ta! But to be fair to her, I should provide more than one source and preferably some peer-reviewed stuff. So I'm still after more info.
Its funny as people love BBQ and brown/black onions and they are the some of the highest carriers of the cancerogenic proteins food wise
But Dr Karl......i mean .......its Dr Karl........how can you not believe what Dr karl says.....the man is a genious......and has some great fashion sense too
This seems to be an issue where there is a lot of OMG it will kill you! rhetoric that doesn't carry any scientific credibility, but if you go looking for scientifically credible work on the subject it's hard to find. http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/jafcau/1998/46/i01/abs/jf970670x.html http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrec...&recid=3827223&q=&uid=788050938&setcookie=yes http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=1557249&dopt=Citation
microwaves are just that, electromagnetic waves which excite water molecules ... they dont hang about and give u cancer when u eat the food. that said, there are millions of carcionegens around which can be present in plastics and all sorts of processed food, but your chance of injury is much much higher every time you go for a ride on ur motorcycle, than when you eat stuff from a microwave.
I just had a poke around some online journals (I'm so going to miss having access through my uni when I graduate), and have found a number of articles that actually encourage the use of a microwave when cooking, as it reduces the amount of carcinogens/mutagens in the food. From "Heterocyclic amines: Mutagens/carcinogens produced during cooking of meat and fish", MEDLINE, 2004: From "Food habits and pancreatic cancer: a case-control study of the Francophone community in Montreal, Canada.", MEDLINE, 2004
Yup, ta. I'm after factual reports tho. I can speculate and give anecdotes already. Interesting, not sure I really follow what they're saying with the B12 thing though. Wow, that's really interesting, thanks. If anything it sounds like microwave oven use should be encouraged, definitely as opposed to frying or other ways of preparing meat that involve burning or smoking. But yeah, eating a microwave-heavy diet probably does lead you towards eating crappy instant meals which has health effects itself. I'm certainly guilty of that.
Yeh the estrogen mimicking chemicals in the plastic wrap will do you worse you wont get cancer directly from the microwave as (unlike alpha and beta particles) they dont hang around but they can be powerful enough to destroy proteins and reduce the nutritional value (someone mentioned before b12) of the food you are eating.
In certain conditions in the microwave, B12 can be broken down, which means there's less of it in the food. The new chemical compounds that it turns into do not fill the useful role of B12, but they are in no way harmful or toxic either.
Thanks.. but again I'd prefer discussion in this thread to be based on credible sources. We all have things we "know" or have heard or believe to be true, but I'm hoping to get real info here with sources to back it up. Ta! Ok, cool. Interestingly from a quick look around, vitamin B12 can be lacking in a meat-free diet too, but generally people get enough that a supplement isn't normally needed. Maybe if you had a pure microwaved diet or were a really hardcore vegan it could be a concern.
My favourite frozen food. I can eat a liter of the bechamel sauce by itself! Never knew you could microwave it, I always Oven it. Not really helpful to the topic but I just couldn't resist talking about my favourite frozen dish.
It's good stuff. Doesn't have the cheating divot in the base of the plastic tray like most brands either, to make it look bigger than it really is. Suffers from the same problem as all microwave lasagne though, in that the middle doesn't get hot until the outside is really dry and horrible. Solution: microwave 10 mins, stand 5 mins, microwave 2 mins. Might even be quicker to put it in the oven!
You may second guess this website as well, but depite its tacky look it is actually the real deal: http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/consumer/microwave.html "Health, a U.S. Federal standard limits microwave leakage from an oven, for the lifetime of the device, to 5 milliwatts per square centimeter when measured 2 inches from the surface of the oven." This is far below the exposure level that is currently considered to be harmful to human health. Im hunting around fro you on Scifidner though. The thing is, is that large ammounts of research are not obvious, as there is not really that large a threat. Infact, I say go by quantity. Tell your wife that if she can find more credible article saying they are DEFINATELY bad, then she wins.
well we have government departments that are in place to regulate and control products and technologies which are harmful ... they fact that they havent issues warnings or warning labels of microwave ovens is better proof than any article you are going to find on the internet.
