Is microwave cooking unsafe or unhealthy?

A microwave is convenient. that too Maybe convenient. Some of us doubt them because they are so useful. When these common appliances were new to the kitchen scene, there was objection to heating food in a perhaps unnatural way. Remember. that urban legend About the girl who boiled her brain while trying to dry her hair because the microwave “cooks it from the inside out”?

Over the decades, the microwave myths have all but disappeared – or so we thought. of social media influencers I posted a video of heating food in the microwave for kids and it got comments Microwaves say “take all the nutrition out of your food!”

It’s not just that one believer. Microwave misinformation is rampant on sites such as TikTok.It is here clip He calls microwaved food “the best way to kill yourself and really, really fast.”

So what’s the deal? Are microwaves dangerous? Are foods cooked with them less healthy than foods cooked in other ways?

Do Microwave Foods Destroy Nutrients?

No, or at least it won’t affect the nutrients when cooked in other ways.

Microwaves don’t magically cook food. They heat water molecules, and then the hot or hot water helps warm the rest of the food. Think of it as something.

What happens to the nutrients in this process? Different cooking methods can have different effects on nutrients.simmered dish Some nutrients may leach into water, but that’s not the issue here. This is because the water you heat is part of the food itself. In fact, microwave cooking happens so quickly that One number one How to preserve nutrients in food.

There is some evidence that microwave heating reduces the amount of vitamin C in food by 20% to 30%. according to healthlinebut the same article also mentions that boiling can reduce vitamin C by 50%, and that frying can “significantly reduce” the vitamin C content of vegetables. There are trade-offs in cooking methods, but microwaves are no significantly worse than other methods.

Do microwave ovens expose you to radiation?

Technically yes, but not the way you think.

When we worry about radiation, we think about: ionization The kind of radiation that comes from X-rays and nuclear bombs. A person or object exposed to ionizing radiation can (in some cases) itself become radioactive. This is a big part of why this kind of radiation is so dangerous.

but the microwave non-ionizing radiation. Other non-ionizing radiation Includes visible light, ultraviolet, and infrared waves from heat lamps. It also includes all forms of radio waves. A few examples are waves coming from a radio tower and picked up by a car radio, waves transmitted by one of his transceivers in the set and picked up by the other, and waves coming from your car radio. It is a wi-fi hotspot and is picked up by your mobile phone or computer. (By the way, microwave ovens operate on frequencies very similar to Wi-Fi, so a microwave with a damaged shield can Wi-Fi connectivity can cause problems.)

So no, microwaves don’t produce “radiation” in the scary (ionizing) sense. It also does not make food radioactive. There are no health hazards here.

Why can’t I heat formula in the microwave?

If microwaves are so safe, why is it sometimes said that you shouldn’t microwave formula or baby food? Not because microwaves spoil food, but Because uneven heating can occurYour baby may eat a mouthful of formula that is too hot if there are hot spots in the food bottle or bowl and you don’t mix it thoroughly before giving it to your baby. If you have, you may be familiar with this phenomenon.