The following is a snippet from my Changing Habits Changing Lives book.

Modern day technology has changed the world our grandparents knew.  We have so many things in our lives that save time: washing machines, dishwashers, cars, ovens, microwaves and this list goes on. I have to ask, if all these time saving devices are in use why is it that everyone is so busy, and we don’t have the time of day to stop and chat or help out a friend?  People are so busy that they accept information as fact and don’t question the authorities on matters such as technology, safe fuels, safe foods, and safe medicines.

The use of microwaves and their safety is one area where complacency is rampant. I have never felt good about microwaves, although I have used them on occasion but with trepidation.  I’d heard rumours of the dangers of microwave ovens but it wasn’t until I read the research that I knew my instincts were right. Here is some of the information I discovered. I hope  it will make you think twice about using your microwave.

In general, people believe that a microwave oven doesn’t have a negative effect on them or the food they cook. Of course, if microwave ovens were really harmful, our authorities and government would never allow them on the market, would they?

How does a microwave oven work?

Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic energy, like light waves or radio waves.  In our modern world, 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 a way of cooking food.

Every microwave oven contains a magnetron, a tube in which electrons (particles of matter) are affected by magnetic and electric fields producing micro wavelength radiation. 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. As the microwaves generated from the magnetron bombard the food, they cause the molecules to rotate at the same frequency, millions of times a second.

Put simply, 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.

Let’s look at the some of the damaging evidence regarding the microwave oven.

Heating a baby’s bottle in a microwave can cause slight changes in the milk while there may be a loss of some vitamins in infant formulas.   In expressed breast milk, some protective properties may be destroyed.

Microwaving baby formulas converted certain trans-amino acids into their synthetic cis-isomers, which in plain English means that it makes the amino acids biologically inactive, therefore unavailable to the body.

Furthermore; the amino acid proline is converted into a poison that is toxic to the baby’s nervous system and  kidneys. It’s bad enough that many babies are not breast fed, but now they are given man-made milk (baby formula) made even more toxic by microwaving.

In 1991, there was a lawsuit in the US 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. Blood for transfusions is routinely warmed, but not in microwave ovens. In this case the microwaving altered the blood and it killed the patient.

Dr Hans Hertel, a food scientist, along with Dr Bernard Blanc, studied the effects of food heated in a microwave on blood components of individuals.   Significant changes were discovered in the blood samples. There was a decrease in all hemoglobin and a change in cholesterol values, especially the ratio of HDL and LDL values and lymphocytes (part of the immune system) showed a distinct short-term decrease following the intake of microwaved food.   In other words, heating food with a microwave oven compromises the immune system.

By the way, Dr Hertels was so vocal about this experiment that in 1993 there was a gag order put on him by the association of manufacturers of microwave ovens to stop him revealing more information about the dangers of microwaves.  The gag order was lifted in 1998.

Put simply, microwaves change food.

By using plastic in a microwave you compound the negative effects of microwave cooked food with the toxins from the plastic, including; zeno-estrogens being leached out into the food from the plastic.

I may be old fashioned in my thoughts on diet and technology, but it seems in the long run those old fashioned actions may just be the saving of human health.

Happy Changing Habits,

Cyndi O’Meara