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It’s interesting what people notice sometimes. In my last video blog, I posted a clip of me in the kitchen whipping up some homemade mayonnaise. One of the comments I received by email about the video asked me if I used my microwave, as this appliance features so prominently behind me as I am mixing up the mayo.
Well, I’m here to set the record straight. I NEVER use my microwave for cooking or defrosting my family’s food. And I NEVER even use it to heat up water for a cup of herbal tea (I’ll get to the reasons in a minute).
Why then do I have one in my kitchen, you might ask? For one, my kitchen was built 12 years ago before I really knew of the dangers of cooking food with a microwave and if I pulled it out now, I’d have a big gaping hole in my wall and would have to redo all my kitchen cabinets. Not a project I’m up for at the moment.
Also, when we use a babysitter for evenings out, she sometimes likes to heat up her dinner with it. The first time this happened, you could hear the audible gasps of horror from me and the kids as she turned it on! We were shocked speechless. I declined to lecture her about the dangers of the microwave at the time, however. It didn’t seem appropriate given the circumstances. Maybe another time!
Ok, let me come completely clean. I do occasionally use the microwave to heat up a fabric bag filled with wheat kernels when any of my kids have a tummy ache. Since the bag is used externally only, this is considered a safe usage of this appliance in your home.
Microwave Cooking Dangers
Let me now briefly cover the reasons why you don’t want to use a microwave to cook your food – EVER. First of all, the manner in which the food or water is heated is completely unnatural and not found anywhere in nature. How this most dangerous appliance has received such widespread acceptance throughout the Western world without much research beforehand into the risks is beyond me. I guess it’s kind of like cell phones – folks who use microwaves have unwittingly allowed themselves to be guinea pigs in the interest of science. If being a lab rat is not your thing, then read on.
Unlike conventional heating which warms the food from without to within, microwave ovens heat internally by creating violent friction in the water molecules within the food. The force of the friction deforms the structures of the water molecules and they are literally torn apart. This process is called “structural isomerism”.
This is why even heating a cup of water for tea with a microwave is not a good idea! You may have seen the pictures of two plants – one watered with microwave heated/then cooled water and the other watered with conventionally heated/then cooled water. The difference in growth and robustness between the two plants is astonishing. You can check these pictures out at this link.
Dozens of people have conducted the same experiment on their own with different types of plants with similar results. The plant(s) watered with microwaved water do not thrive and/or die.
With the water molecules significantly impaired in quality, the molecular damage continues to expand to the food particles themselves as the heating continues. What has been discovered so far is that microwave heating has unfavorable effects on fats and proteins causing assimilation issues for the person who consumes the food. Microwaves are powerful enough to rupture the cell walls in the food; there is no doubt that fragile proteins are altered in the process. In addition, Swiss studies have shown that microwave heating causes unfavorable changes in vitamin content and the availability of these nutrients for absorption in the gut.
The radiation from microwave cooking destroys and deforms the food molecules and creates new compounds completely unknown in nature. Irradiation creates the exact same type of compounds in food as does microwaving – radiolytic compounds. With the majority of people seemingly against irradiation of food, why on earth are they then using a microwave at home or choosing to live near a cell phone tower for that matter?
Research on Microwave Cooking
Most troubling is the small, yet tightly controlled study by Dr. Hans Hertel of Switzerland. He discovered abnormal blood profiles in people who ate food cooked in a microwave as compared with people who ate the exact same food heated up conventionally. Dr. Hertel’s study is described in Tom Valentine’s book “Search for Health”. Since this book is pretty difficult to get hold of (last time I checked it out of the libary a few years ago, there was only one copy available in the entire state of FL and I had to wait six weeks for that copy to be couriered to my local library!), here is a link to an extensive description of Dr. Hertel’s study and the results:
Of course, who could forget the tragic story of Norma Levitt who in 1991 died from a blood transfusion during routine hip replacement surgery. The blood used in the transfusion was heated in a microwave, which was not standard practice. Blood is routinely warmed for transfusions, but never in a microwave! Clearly, microwaving the blood altered it into a state that proved to be deadly for Ms. Levitt. Imagine what microwaving your food does! Do you really think eating food heated in this way could be anything but dangerous and, at the very least, unhealthy?
Induction Stoves Cook Very Similarly to Microwave Ovens
Note also that the trend toward induction stoves is very troubling as the radiation produced from these ranges is similar to the risks from microwaves. Check out this article that details induction stove dangers and what you should look for instead to avoid an EMF hazard in your kitchen from inductive cooking.
One additional point to ponder as I close. Be very aware that microwaves are extensively used in the restaurant industry. They are also used almost exclusively in school cafeterias. Nearly every time you eat out, some, if not all, your food has been heated in a microwave. Just another reason for limiting your trips to eat out and spending time in the kitchen preparing your own meals and packing a lunchbox!
Sorry, Don, but I don't agree at all. There is very much such a thing as an impaired water molecule!!!! If you haven't seen photographs of various water molecules in different environments (pristine to polluted), they are quite astounding. You didn't comment at all on the study in "Search for Health" which is probably the most damning evidence against the microwave to date. I could go on and on (like microwave is not a form of radiation? In High School Physics you learn that even visible light is a form of radiation as is heat). I don't think you would be open minded about the subject anyway based on the tone of your comment so I will stop here.
Sorry Sarah, Don had a mixture of right and not quite right. But have you really seen photos of water molecules?
You are right that microwaves, heat and light are a form of radiation, but Don is right when he says there is no isomer of water. There isn’t, it’s physics. Radiation is the emission of energy in wave or particle form. Microwaves do not have an energy level sufficient to cause radiolysis so cannot create “radiolytic compounds”, that can only be done by high energy radiation well into the ionising segment of the electo-magnetic spectrum. Again, that’s physics, it’s impirical, provable and repeatable. Don is also right when he says that fats, sugars and ice have weaker dipoles and therefore are less affected by microwaves.
He is also right in saying that at a given heat, the molecules will vibrate at the same speed regardless of the source of that heat. Given that roasting, grilling, frying and baking all heat up to the 200°C range while microwaving is stuck down near the boiling point of water at 100°C, conventional cooking creates molecular vibration far in excess of anything a microwave oven could do. If microwaving can violently rip a molecule apart then I hate to think what baking does!!
The microwaved water on plants has been debunked. Do it yourself (and I mean yourself, don’t let someone else tell you their results). A Bohmert’s (or the author’s granddaughter, it’s the same series) series of photos is a fake, a fraud, photoshopped. Look carefully at Day 1 and Day 5 and there is NO difference except for the microwaved plant, there’s not even any growth on the normal plant!
I haven’t seen the study in “Search for Health” and would love to see it. But if it mentions Hans Hertel I’ll throw it away immediately. His “paper” has never been published in a peer reviewed journal not released for scrutiny. If it mentions the Nazis inventing the microwave oven (they didn’t) or the Soviets banning it in 1976 (the didn’t either), if it has a definition of radiation that hints or suggests that it is the result of the decay of molecules, I’ll do the same thing.
Thank you! This blog post makes me never want to read anything on her blog again, because she’s so sure of herself when her science is so dead wrong its embarrassing.
Exactly. I’m with you.
The mere fact that you’re talking about structural isomerism about water is a blatant display of your ignorance. But you don’t stop there. You go on confusing «radiation» as the general process by which electromagnetic wave pass through matter and «radioactivity» which is the result of ionized particules coming from a chain reaction commonly called «irradiation».
Ionizing radiation is generated through NUCLEAR REACTIONS, either artificial or natural, by very high temperature (e.g. plasma discharge or the corona of the Sun), via production of high energy particles in particle accelerators, or due to acceleration of charged particles by the electromagnetic fields produced by natural processes, from lightning to supernova explosions.
I hope you are intelligent enough to understand the difference and that YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY ACHIEVE RADIOACTIVITY WITH YOUR 1500 WATTS MICROWAVE.
You don’t want to use a microwave fine. But you shouldn’t go around spreading false information about something you obviously don’t understand.
Finally, if you want to go around brandishing studies, I suggest you use serious ones. As the one by Doctor Hertel you rely on was done on 8 people ( including) him. Moreover, THERE WAS NO CONTROL GROUP!!! The 8 persons drank and ate both type of foods. Finally, they only «tested» raw food against microwave cooked food. Therefore, we don’t know if there’s a difference between microwave cooked or oven cooked.
Godspeed. (You’ll need it)
Amen!
First of all, I would recommend that you read this article, it is published by a reputable source, and everything in it is scientifically proven and accurate: ehealthmd.com/content/microwaved-food-dangerous-myths-and-facts#axzz3jaJlCdz6
Second of all, Norma Levitt is completely irrelevant in this article. Boiling her blood would have had the same effect as microwaving her blood: the two methods accomplish the same thing. They both heat the blood up to very high temperatures. Blood is not just a liquid, like water: blood is alive, full of red and white blood cells, and many proteins, for example hemoglobin. All cells die at high temperatures, and their proteins denaturize (deform). It is the same process as pasteurization, which involves heating a medium full of bacteria to the point at which they die.
Third, there is no impaired water molecule. There is impaired water, but that is due to contaminants within the water, such as bacteria. Hydrogen and Oxygen always arrange themselves into their characteristic “Mickey Mouse shape” when they form water, and there is no other shape they can take, and as long as it has a mickey mouse shape, it will always have the same polarity. Microwaves are non-ionizing radiation, they do not rearrange water because of water’s polarity.
Lastly, if water is torn apart, as you say in the article, it simply yields 2H2 and O2 (For every 2 molecules that are decomposed, 2 molecules of H2, Hydrogen, gas are formed, and 1 of O2, Oxygen gas is formed). These gasses are harmless, as they are abundant in the atmosphere.
There has never been a study the conclusively proves anything, Kiwi-Ian shows with the debunking of the “Search for Health” article.
Search for Health isn’t an article … it is a very thick book. And, Norma Levitt’s blood was warmed, not boiled with a microwave.
Even if it was warmed, the microwave is not the place to do it, because it warms it too much. It is equivalent of pasteurizing milk on the stove. As blood contains a high amount of water, it is heated up quickly. Blood does not even need to be boiled for the cells to die: the cells die way beneath the boiling point of water, because the enzymes and proteins they depend upon to carry out cellular processes begin to denaturize above 100 degrees farenheit (While the boiling point is 212), the cell membrane becomes too fluid, and many of the organelles that are part of the endomembrane system stop functioning, due to problems with their components (Which is why having a high fever for an extended period of time can have serious adverse effects). In essence, many parts of the cell lose their functional shape, because they Hydrogen bonds and Disulfide bridges, etc, cannot hold the proteins in their normal shape at temperatures that are too high. Thus the proteins cannot carry out their functions, which in turn causes the whole cell to die. Furthermore, if the membrane of the cells burst and harmful enzymes leak out, they could damage other parts of the body,
And I stand corrected: Search for Health is a book. However, that book is old and outdated, and as Kiwi-Ian pointed out, Dr. Hertel is not a reputable source.
You argue with people, such as Dondye, that they are biased on the issue, and do not keep an open mind on it. I still recommend that you read the article published by ehealthMD at ehealthmd.com/content/microwaved-food-dangerous-myths-and-facts#axzz3jaJlCdz6 as it is full of links to actual studies (Published from sources such as the EPA), and it is more current than Hans Hertel’s studies.
By the way, the article also addresses Hans Hertel’ study. I highly recommend you read it, as it could give you a more objective view of the issue.
First off, I would like to say thanks, Sara for all the good advice you give – I stumbled on to this post while reading your 5/12/10 post about proper care and feeding of infants that I intend to forward to my nephew and his soon to be bride. However, I will have to add a caveat that the link about microwave ovens is total nonsense.
As Rebecca points out, the two plants story has been debunked. It is a simple enough experiment to replicate yourself; just make sure that the water for both plants is allowed to cool – per your post about using boiling water as an herbicide.
There is no such thing as an "impaired" water molecule. There is no "structural isomerism" – two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom only fit together one way. At 212 degrees F they separate – no matter what source is used to heat them. If "the structure" of water could be changed so easily by simply microwaving it, we'd all be using our fusion generators to light our houses. All other things being equal, there is no test that a physicist can perform to discern microwaved water from water that has not been microwaved.
A microwave oven does not heat food using "radiation". It uses an oscillating magnetic field that, thanks to water's unique dipole structure, causes the water molecule to vibrate. (I'm not sure how "natural" this is but I am very thankful for the giant magnetic field that encompasses the earth and protects us from the ionizing radiation of the sun.) The measure of how fast the molecules in a substance are vibrating is called it's temperature.
The effects of the magnetron only penetrate the outermost layer of the thing being heated – it will still be cold in the middle if you don't cook it long enough. The middle is heated by the neighboring molecules in the same manner as any other source – by conduction. When the thing next to you gets warm, you get warm too.
Most of the strange ways things seem to heat in the microwave are because fats, sugars and ice have much weaker dipoles, so the liquid water molecules will heat up first. The reason food doesn't brown the same way is because the food is not being bombarded by infrared radiation the way a conventional oven works. Food doesn't brown when you steam it either.
Every other chemical change ascribed as harmful when done by a microwave oven is the same for any type of heating. That is what cooking does.
Unfortunately, most people overcook with their microwave ovens. You wouldn't cook a delicate sauce on the stove on high without stirring it, yet this is how most people use their microwaves.
It is a sad comment on our education system that intelligent, well educated people can be so easily taken in by pseudo logic and conspiracy theories because they don't understand science. (If we all listened to Dr. Mercola, we wouldn't be cooking at all and he is a Doctor!)
Please keep up the good advice but try to be a little more discerning about the conspiracy theories.
Peace,
Don
P.S. The only connection between microwaving food and radiolytic compounds is in the "your microwave is killing you" literature. Radiolytic compounds are formed by ionizing radiation of which your microwave oven produces exactly none.
I heart this soooooo much, I can’t even tell you.
I am electrically sensitive and really cant use microwave ovens without some very unpleasant side effects.
I too use my microwave as an extra cabinet. Currently we are building a home and found a combo microwave/convection oven/hood. It can be used just as a convection oven.
Of course there will be deniers of what Norma died of .. a jury found OJ Simpson innocent too. If the microwave wasn't dangerous, why don't hospitals use them as standard practice? Because there is undeniable empirical evidence that microwaving human blood destroys it while a gentle warming conventionally does not.
Norma Levitt did indeed die after receiving microwaved blood. Her family sued the hospital claiming that overheating resulted in haemolysis (break down of the red blood cells) which released potassium ions (the active ingredient in a judicial execution by lethal injection) and killed her. The hospital claimed that it was a blood clot based on the autopsy report. Whichever, neither claimed it was some sort of mysterious radiation. The hospital won.
Why don’t hospitals microwave blood? For the same reasons they don’t heat blood in saucepans or under the grill, both apparently acceptable ways of cooking food. Cooked blood, whatever way it was cooked, is a killer.
Please look at the evidence : Warner v. Hillcrest Medical Center 1995 OK CIV APP 123 and the newspaper report on “Patient Killed by Blood Cooked in a Microwave Oven Like a Baked Potato; Weekly World News 16 July 1991”
By the way, a science paper at this time was indeed proposing microwave heating of blood providing it was well controlled : Rapid in-line blood warming using microwave energy: preliminary studies; Schwaitzberg SD, Allen MJ, Connolly RJ, Grabowy RS, Carr KL, Cleveland RJ.; Department of Surgery, New England Medical Center, Boston, MA 02111. J Invest Surg. 1991;4(4):505-10.
Thanks for posting, Rebecca. Regardless of whether the plant photos are faked or not – I still would not drink microwaved water. It destroys the water molecular structure and would not be hydrating at the very least and damaging to the body at worst.
How exactly does it destroy the chemical structure of water? There is literally no scientific basis for that statement. Microwaves heat food differently than other, more traditional appliances such as the oven, but still in a very similar way. Microwaves use rotating magnetic fields to cause the water molecules to vibrate, generating friction, which causes the water to heat. Ovens heat food without rotating magnetic fields, by conduction, however there is nothing unnatural about the way microwaves heat food. Regular ovens also generate friction in much the same way as microwaves, when they collide and rub against each other. In either case, these collisions are not enough to separate water into different compounds: At 2200 degrees Celsius, about 3 percent of water are separated into their components (Keep in mind that temperature is the movement and vibration of the molecules and atoms, so it is impossible for water to separate in the microwaveas the temperatures are simply not high enough, and also that even though water evaporates at 100 degrees celsius, its chemical structure is still intact, it just is not attached to other molecules by hydrogen bonds, and kept in place as a liquid.) Also, water has no structural isomer, the only cases in which a water molecule can be different from another water molecule,is “heavy water” in which deuterium hydrogen is used instead of the regular protium hydrogen found in 99.8% of water molecules. The microwave does not generate harmful ionizing radiation which could actually impair the water, as you put it: Microwave ovens do not have enough power to do so. At no point during this process are the water molecules damaged or impaired, and there have been no studies that correlate microwaved water to health defects. Dr. Hertzel’s study, which you discuss briefly tested an infinitesimal amount of people, which is not a large enough group for such a big accusation, and his results have never been reproduced.
In addition, Radiolysis is defined as being the dissociation of molecules by nuclear radiation, which obviously does not apply in this case.
I just wanted to point out that non ionizing radiation does not “stick around in the food” after it is taken out of the microwave, much the same way in which light does not “stick around” after you turn off the light switch.
I suggest you google the photos of water microscopically photographed after being microwaved.
This article explains the science – health-science.com/microwave_hazards.html
I use my little toaster oven for reheating and it really doesn't take much more time than a microwave. I have the Euro-Pro model and it is really a very versatile little appliance.
We also have a microwave that sits in a space cut out of the cabinetry. We have NEVER used this microwave and it is never plugged in. We use it to hold my crockpot and a file of recipes printed from the Internet. My brother went to heat up his coffee once and his mouth dropped open when he saw all the stuff inside. He was incredulous as he looked at me questioningly. I am trying to get my husband to make a door with top hinges so I can remove the microwave and use the very large hole as storage which I really need. I have not used a microwave in about 8 years, maybe longer.
I have no argument with the rest of the points, but I believe that plants experiment was not real and has been thoroughly debunked, including on Mythbusters. I think snopes has something about it too.
Thanks for the post, I'm currently trying to drastically reduce our usage!
http://www.snopes.com/science/microwave/plants.asp
We've cut back 99% of our microwave usage this year after reading such stories as you've linked. I had a similar microwave/hood combo unit over my stove and was able to replace it with a nice high efficiency exhaust hood … only having to redo a little bit of tile work to the back splash area … a quick fix without ripping out cabinets. Does your microwave/hood exhaust to the exterior of your home? Thanks for the links … I'm going to have my family read them.