Microwave ovens: Would you eat 'spent fuel'?

ALL forms of cooking – baking, frying, steaming, etc – involve heat being transmitted to food. The food acquires heat energy. In the microwave process, heat is generated from inside the food and it travels outwards. The food loses heat energy.

From this perspective, microwaving is the opposite of cooking. The food becomes the "fuel" which generates heat. Eating microwaved food is thus equivalent to eating spent fuel.

When food is microwaved, its molecules are agitated 2.45 billion times per second. That's 147 billion times if you merely re-heated it for one minute. Its energy is extremely chaotic!

What I have just written is, of course, not scientific. But this does not meant it is not true, only that scientist have not studied the subject adequately. Hardly any scientific studies have been done on the effects of microwaved foods.

Hans Hertel

The few scientists who bothered to investigate, however, found reasons for concern.

In 1992, Swiss scientists Hans Hertel and Bernard Blanc reported that eating microwaved food produced significant changes in the blood and immune function – changes normally associated with infection and the early stages in the development of cancer.

What happened next? Industry groups obtained a gag order from the courts to prevent them from further publishing their findings. Blanc retracted his statements while Hertel fought on and, in 1998, got the gag order lifted.

The Lancet reported in 1989 that heating milk formulae in microwave altered its chemical structure. Researchers G Lubec et al wrote that such changes "can lead to structural, functional and immunological damage" and that one compound became neurotoxic.

In 1992, scientists at Standford University reported that human breast milk, when re-heated in a microwave, loses some of its abilities to fight infection. Also, the E Coli bacteria grew five to 18 times faster in microwaved cow's milk.

More scientific data – and not just "urban legends" – about microwaved food can be found on the internet, such as the website of health writer Dr Joseph Mercola, www.mercola.com.

To be sure, the data is not conclusive. It takes a tremendous amount of study before any scientific finding can be conclusive.

For example, after spending billions of dollars on research over more than 70 years, scientists can only show that smoking and lung cancer are correlated. They still cannot prove, conclusively, that smoking causes lung cancer.

Interestingly, Andy Ho mentions that food irradiation – "industrialists zapping their rice, potatoes or beef with radioactive rays to extend their shelf life" – "can change DNA molecules in our cells, causing genetic mutations."

But haven't we been previously assured by health authorities, including the US FDA, that this practice is also safe? Who are we to believe?

For me, the choice is clear. I avoid microwaved food as much as I can. After all, as Andy Ho rightly pointed out, "food cooked in the microwave oven is generally quite bland."

---