The Hidden Hazards Of Microwave Cooking

The Hidden Hazards Of Microwave Cooking
by Anthony Wayne and Lawrence Newell
Is it possible that millions of people are ignorantly sacrificing their health in exchange for the convenience of microwave ovens? Why did the Soviet Union ban the use of microwave ovens in 1976? Who invented microwave ovens, and why? The answers to these questions may shock you into throwing your microwave oven in the trash.
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 them.
Of course, if microwave ovens were really harmful, our government would never allow them on the market, would they? Would they? Regardless of what has been "officially" released concerning microwave ovens, we have personally stopped using ours based on the research facts outlined in this article.
The purpose of this report is to show proof - evidence - that microwave cooking is not natural, nor healthy, and is far more dangerous to the human body than anyone could imagine.
However, the microwave oven manufacturers, Washington City politics, and plain old human nature are suppressing the facts and evidence. Because of this, people are continuing to microwave their food - in blissful ignorance - without knowing the effects and danger of doing so.
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. In our modern technological age, microwaves are used to relay long distance telephone signals, television programs, and computer information across the earth or to a satellite in space. But the microwave is most familiar to us as an energy source for cooking food.
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. This unusual type of heating also causes substantial damage to the surrounding molecules, often tearing them apart or forcefully deforming them.
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.
Many terms are used in describing electromagnetic waves, such as wavelength, amplitude, cycle and frequency:
Wavelength determines the type of radiation, i.e. radio, X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, etc.
Amplitude determines the extent of movement measured from the starting point.
Cycle determines the unit of frequency, such as cycles per second, Hertz, Hz, or cycles/second.
Frequency determines the number of occurrences within a given time period (usually 1 second); The number of occurrences of a recurring process per unit of time, i.e. the number of repetitions of cycles per second.
Radiation = spreading energy with electromagnetic waves
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 officially released 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. As consumers, we're supposed to have a certain degree of common sense to use in judgment.
Take the example of eggs and how they were "proven" to be so harmful to our health in the late 1960's. This brought about imitation egg products and big profits for the manufacturers, while egg farms went broke.
Now, recent government sponsored studies are saying that eggs are not bad for us after all. So, whom should we believe and what criteria should we use to decide matters concerning our health?
Since it's currently published that microwaves - purportedly - don't leak into the environment, when properly used and with approved design, the decision lies with each consumer as to whether or not you choose to eat food heated by a microwave oven or even purchase one in the first place.
Motherly instincts are right
On a more humorous side, the "sixth sense" every mother has is impossible to argue with. Have you ever tried it? Children will never win against a mother's intuition. It's like trying to argue with the arm - appearing out of nowhere - that pinned you to the back of the seat when your mother slammed on the brakes.
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 they 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