Rachel wrote:the only risk i've ever heard of with microwaved food is that if you cook your food in some plastics the chemicals in the plastic can leak out into the food. i dont know if thats true or a myth or anything though.
Actually, that's true. Many plastics contain all sorts of really interesting leachable components. I vaguely recall a minor increase in estrogen levels in men that's traceable to using plastic containers to cook or store food, because there's an estrogen-like kajigger that works its way out into the food.
Fiddelysquat wrote:You should look in to some simple recipes online to get yourself started. You don't want to have a quadruple bypass surgery at age 25 because all you eat is Hungry Jack microwave dinners.
Cooking isn't as complicated or scary as it seems. I'm sure there are plenty of sites out there with easy steps to making simple, tasty meals that won't clog your arteries.
What's wrong with Hungry Jack? It's a pound of food...A pound of food! That's almost enough to feed even my bottomless gullet.
Okay. If you are eating something that is unhealthy, it will be unhealthy no matter how you cook it. If you cook leftover french fries in the microwave or the oven or the toaster or whatever, they will still be french fries, with the same amount of nutritional value as they had before. Putting frozen food in a microwave does not melt off calories, or put any on. It is just a form of cooking.
Bangel wrote:Okay. If you are eating something that is unhealthy, it will be unhealthy no matter how you cook it. If you cook leftover french fries in the microwave or the oven or the toaster or whatever, they will still be french fries, with the same amount of nutritional value as they had before. Putting frozen food in a microwave does not melt off calories, or put any on. It is just a form of cooking.
Not quite, Bangel. Microwaving food destroys anti-oxidants.
Regina Reichardt wrote:Scientists of the CEBAS-CSIC Research Institute at the University of Murcia, Spain, found out that microwaves can destroy nutrients in foods, especially so-called antioxidants ... Steaming is by far the healthiest way to prepare vegetables – and microwaving the worst.
I think the worst part of cooking in the microwave is the chemicals from teflon contained in the plastic and paper containers used to cook or contains the food. If it gets too hot, the chemical leeches out.
It's not banned yet in the US, but it is in most countries.
Like many people have stated in this thread before, microwaves do not affect the nutritional value of the food very much, but the you should watch the food itself. However, microwaves are notorious for leaking, especially the older ones. But the amount that is leaked isn't usually significant enough to cause any health problems. Just to be safe though, step one meter away from your microwave while waiting for your food, the radiation decreases drastically within a meter to almost non-existant.
I think that when people hear radiation they automaticaly think of same type of radiation that you get from nuclear power plants or nuclear bombs. But the radiation that your microwave emits is different. Its just like visible light, infrared, radio waves, low frequency RF and static fields, and I think its called non-ionizing or something like that.
Im pretty sure cordless phones, motion detectors, radar and Wi-Fi all use microwave radiation, not just your microwave oven.
Microwave radiation does not have enough energy to destabalize atoms. Basicaly it only has enough energy to excite molecules. When you stick your food in the microwave, the radiation excites the water molecules causing heat, and your food to cook. yay!
So in short, I think you are pretty safe unless you crawl into a giant microwave and turn it on.
You are safe from radioactivity. You are not necessarily safe from the poor use of chemicals that can leech out of plastics due to being excited. Nor are you necessarily safe from plastics that may depolymerize due to the input of enough energy through microwaves.
While in theory any plastic is a single polymer sheet, in reality it is often treated with all sorts of other coatings and washes. And that's part of what you have to watch out for.
That being said, I eat some microwaved dinners. For the most part, though, I prefer to save the microwave for leftovers and just transfer the food to a microwave-safe glass container.
