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The Dangers of Microwave Ovensby Julie
Harrell Okay,
most of us probably have one. If you are an otherwise healthy-eating,
Kombucha-drinking, herb-taking Co-op shopper who believes his/her
microwave
oven is safe to use and the food that is cooked in it is safe to eat
once in a
while, raise your hand. Has anyone ever thought about the lack of
safety
everyone faces while cooking their food in a microwave? Let’s
talk about
that. Microwaves
work by producing micro-wavelength radiation at about 2.45 GHz that
interacts
with water that is within food molecules. This interaction creates
millions of
molecular polarity changes every second while cooking. The agitation
and resulting
friction heats up food, tearing apart and causing other types of
structural damage
to surrounding molecules. Conventional
heating, on the other hand, transfers heat from without to within,
changing
food molecules by what is known as the Maillard Reaction, first
described in
1916. Conventional cooking indeed destroys nutrients in some foods,
rendering them
useless if not prepared properly. Research suggests that mankind has
been using
fire, presumably also cooking food, for 1.5 million years.(1) Personally,
I have always distrusted microwave ovens, even as a rambunctious child.
My gut
instinct was that it didn’t “feel right” to be around a microwave oven.
Without
proof, I suspected that my funny feeling was a result of escaping
radiation
from the oven. Fast forward to today. Still not a fan of microwave
ovens, I
have never owned one, but my husband brought his beloved old rattling
microwave
with him two years ago and I stashed it in the basement, hoping to
deter usage
of it by my daughter. Conducting
research for this article, I came across the FDA standard for microwave
ovens
in the To
test the FDA standard in reality, I measured the offending microwave
oven in
our basement (using my Electrosmog Meter) and discovered that when
turned on,
at more than a foot from the oven, it pours out radiation — at 5.00
μW/cm2. According
to Less EMF, that’s less than 1/1000 of the FDA standard. I was
shocked,
believing that surely the old thing was leaking. I
was losing sleep, wondering why that microwave oven in the basement was
giving
me the heebie jeebies if it wasn’t leaking radiation. So I conducted
another
test for magnetic fields using my Trifield Meter — and guess what? The
microwave oven is in fact leaking tremendous EMF pollution. It’s at the
highest
point, three on the magnetic field, at five feet away from the oven,
while
turned on. The alarm goes off and my skin crawls as the microwave
popcorn pops.
We’ve all heard the microwave hospital horror stories, so I won’t
repeat those,
but did you know that the plastic wrap used in many “microwavable
foods” leaches
into the food itself? Since
over 90% of American households now have microwave ovens, chances are,
there
are mothers who also microwave their babies’ formula and possibly even
expressed milk in plastic bottles. Dr. Lita Lee of In
1991, Hans Hertal, a To
nuke or not to nuke, that is the question. The answer lies within, my
friend…
You can always just follow your instinct. Notes 1.
www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1b.shtml#maillard%20def.
2.
www.fda.gov/cdrh/consumer/microwave.html.
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