Safety of microwave cooking

[klem kedidelhopper]

On Apr 13, 10:59 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

GregS wrote:

Heating food can make it taste damm good.
It usually makes eating dead animal meat more tolerable.

   You prefer your meat still be alive?

--
Lead free solder is Belgium's version of 'Hold my beer and watch this!'

My original question concerned the food however since we're on the
subject, it is a well known fact that living tissue undergoes
biological changes, even if minute changes when exposed to RF energy.
This especially holds true for microwave. Several years ago beat
patrolmen used VHF portable radios before they came equipped with
external microphones. These kluges were big and heavy, had six watt
finals and were nicknamed "bricks". You held them up to the side of
your face to communicate. Beat cops used these for years. I believe
that it was a city in Connecticut where a high incidence of eye
problems were noticed among this group of patients. The only logical
common denominator was the RF exposure. Perhaps this is a matter of
semantics but getting back to my original comment, aren't "biological
changes" the very definition of cancer? Lenny

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:45:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
<jangus@suddenlink.net> wrote:

gonzo wrote:
http://www.relfe.com/microwave.html

"Standing in front of a microwave is also highly damaging to
your health.

Yep. Most of the small amount of RF leakage comes out the sides of
the oven, around the door seal and hinges. I have several microwave
oven leakage detectors. There's next to nothing coming out the front.

Perhaps you have already felt this intuitively?

That explains my growling stomach. However, it may also have been my
cooking, which I suspect is equally as dangerous as RF.

We know that cells explode in the microwave - just fry an
egg in your microwave. We are made up of trillions of cells.

Ummm... cooking is the art of breaking down cellular structures by
removing most of the water. Whether the water is removed by microwave
or incineration, the results are similar. Oddly, boiling in water,
the method of cooking that results in the minimum water loss, also
results in the largest vitamin loss, all by dilution because most
vitamins are water soluble.

Incidentally, on the vitamin front:
<http://www.thedietchannel.com/Microwave-Cooking-And-Food-Vitamins.htm>

So work out how many are getting damaged if you stand in
front of your microwave for 5-10 minutes."

You have somewhere between 10 and 100 trillion cells. You can afford
to lose a few.

<http://ask.yahoo.com/20020625.html>

Pfffft. That was the sound of your credibility going up in
smoke.

You obviously don't want to hear it, so I'm not going to waste
my time explaining how a microwave oven works.

Dielectric heating.

Jeff

Chef Jeff.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:j1aas55ekfpbtrkl4or68ohjfeo5pbdvqt@4ax.com...

On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:01:21 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Over the years that I knew him, I lost count of the number of his
colleagues
that literally dropped dead from heart attacks. No warnings. No previously
known health problems. Sadly, my father-in-law also finally succumbed to
the
same fate. He was only in his mid fifties, reasonably trim and fit, didn't
drink and didn't smoke. There had been no warnings prior to the event,
that
anything was wrong. He simply dropped down on the golf course from a
massive
coronary, and died a few hours later in hospital, after suffering two
more.

Well, you can add one more person to the collection. I didn't drop
dead, but came close. In 2002, I narrowly missed having a heart
attack by having a triple bypass operation. I've been exposed to all
manner of RF for the previous 45 years. I don't drink or smoke. Other
than kidney stones, I had no previous maladies. Sounds like a
parallel to your father-in-law.

However, we both left out some details. My parents and family have a
history of cardiac issues. Those that died a natural death invariably
died from a stroke, heart attack, or similar cause. The family also
has a history of high blood pressure, which is largely invisible to
the casual observer. If I dropped dead today from a stroke or
coronary infraction, would you blame my genetics or my exposure to RF?

Moral: Pick you parents wisely.

Obviously, genetics need to play a part in any considerations here, as you
say. I didn't know his father, but did know his mother, who went on well
into her eighties, and smoked literally 'like a chimney', and it was lung
disease which finally got her, as you might imagine. He had several
brothers, all older than he was and, although they have died off one by one
now mostly, they were all well advanced in years when they went (it's been
20 odd years now since the F-i-L died - actually on my son's birthday). I
believe there is one brother still left alive now. So general genetics don't
seem to have been a major player for coronary heart disease, in the case of
his family, although obviously, it's a complex subject, and quirks of fate
in these respects, clearly happen.

Interesting though, how closely he seems to parallel you. I wonder if your
other radio club members who died, were 'casual' radio users just from a ham
perspective, or professionals working around this stuff for 10 hours a day
for many years. I wonder if there's any research or collated statistics on
this out on the big bad interweb ?

Arfa

 

[Arfa Daily]

"William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:hq36ph$mui$1@news.eternal-september.org...

Probably not. Microwave heating (you can't very well call it
"cooking") has been around for 60 years. If there were a risk,
it probably would have been discovered by now.

Why can't you call it "cooking"? If the device changes the
structure of the food in some way by the process of heating it,
then I would call that cooking.

Try making a cake sometime in a microwave, and you'll understand.

It is perfectly possible to 'cook' a cake in a microwave oven. What you
can't do, easily, is to produce the external crust, which is a product of
water removal and scorching, by direct application of heat to the outside.
This is a specialised way of cooking, called baking. In order for it to
work, it's a case of carefully balancing the heat and duration of
application that's being used, such that it penetrates all the way to the
centre of the cake mix, thus cooking it, before it has scorched the outside
to the point where it becomes a heat insulator, and stops enough heat
penetrating. It is the heat only that cooks the food, and it doesn't matter
whether this gets into that food by radiation, convection, steam, blowtorch
or whatever. Baking, frying, steaming, griddling, charbroiling, pressure
cooking and so on, are all just variations on a theme, producing different
nutritional and taste variations. The common theme to them all is heat.
Further, many microwave ovens also contain a conventional oven, which can be
used in combination with the microwave part. In this type of oven, the cake
will be cooked very quickly, and have a crust ...

I make scrambled eggs in the microwave. When I take them out,
they have changed from raw eggs to cooked eggs, exactly the
same as if they had been cooked in a pan...

Most foods are "cooked" by the external application of heat (either
conduction or convection). A microwave oven heats the food directly, which
produces rather different results.

Not really it doesn't, in terms of the actual process of "cooking" ...

The one thing microwaves do very well is to denature protein (that is,
coagulate it). This is why scrambled eggs come out okay. It's also the
reason your eyes have to be protected from microwaves.


I particularly like the way microwave ovens handle bacon.

So, how's that, then? Is your bacon still raw when it comes out?
Merely heated?

Mostly the latter. I like the way you can easily choose the amount of
"doneness", and it's almost impossible to burn the bacon.

Hmmm. I'm not sure that I would like my bacon to be merely heated, and I'm
frankly surprised that you, as an American, like it that way. Everywhere
that I've ever eaten breakfast in the U.S., the bacon has needed a chainsaw
to get through it, and you had to be careful not to take another diner's eye
out with a flying shard when it shattered under your knife and fork ! Don't
get me wrong - I actually like it like that ... My wife owns several cafes
(that's cafe as in U.K. not U.S.) and we go through a lot of pounds of bacon
every day. It is cooked daily, a little in advance, by grilling, and then
kept refrigerated. When it is needed, it is quickly microwaved to the
correct temperature, before being used in whatever dish it is needed in.
This is a good example of the bacon already being fundamentally 'cooked' by
the original grilling process, such that the microwave is merely reheating
it. Very little additional cooking takes place by the application of the
microwaves. You would not tell the difference in the hot product, between it
having been reheated, or having just come off the grille.

Arfa

 

[PeterD]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:39:02 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:01:21 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Over the years that I knew him, I lost count of the number of his colleagues
that literally dropped dead from heart attacks. No warnings. No previously
known health problems. Sadly, my father-in-law also finally succumbed to the
same fate. He was only in his mid fifties, reasonably trim and fit, didn't
drink and didn't smoke. There had been no warnings prior to the event, that
anything was wrong. He simply dropped down on the golf course from a massive
coronary, and died a few hours later in hospital, after suffering two more.

Well, you can add one more person to the collection. I didn't drop
dead, but came close. In 2002, I narrowly missed having a heart
attack by having a triple bypass operation. I've been exposed to all
manner of RF for the previous 45 years. I don't drink or smoke. Other
than kidney stones, I had no previous maladies. Sounds like a
parallel to your father-in-law.

However, we both left out some details. My parents and family have a
history of cardiac issues. Those that died a natural death invariably
died from a stroke, heart attack, or similar cause. The family also
has a history of high blood pressure, which is largely invisible to
the casual observer. If I dropped dead today from a stroke or
coronary infraction, would you blame my genetics or my exposure to RF?

Moral: Pick you parents wisely.

Almost exactly the same story as Jeff (even the triple bypass at 48).
Bad choice in parents certainly contributed in my case, but heart
problems were not common in the family until my generation: my older
sister and I both have had bypass operations, with a low HDL being the
main problem for me.

 

[GregS]

In article <hq33gl$771$1@news.eternal-september.org>, "William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

"Standing in front of a microwave is also highly damaging to
your health. Perhaps you have already felt this intuitively?
We know that cells explode in the microwave -- just fry an
egg in your microwave. We are made up of trillions of cells.
So work out how many are getting damaged if you stand in
front of your microwave for 5-10 minutes."

This shows a complete non-understanding of how a microwave oven heats
food -- or why an egg explodes.

In case anyone is wondering... All microwave ovens have a perforated metal
window that reflects microwaves back into the cavity. Virtually no microwave
energy leaks out.

There is always waves leaking out. A little food in the seal will help that.
It might be damaging to the eyes if you were looking in, but you would feel
heat on an other body parts if it were really high. Thats not common at all.
My HeathKit microwave had a conductive plastic outer seal that would
be heat damaged from microwaves. I don't thing the HeathKit used the 1/4 wavelength seal
common on all todays machines. It used a capacitive seal. I have several leakage detectors, and all
microwaves leak.

greg

 

[GregS]

In article <4BC52F95.F028B4B2@earthlink.net>, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

GregS wrote:

Heating food can make it taste damm good.
It usually makes eating dead animal meat more tolerable.


You prefer your meat still be alive?

A fresh kill might be considered live. When I say its dead, is it not dead ?
I always like to stir up some thought. I eat meat.
Many nutritionists stress eating live plants.
Plans food is alive. Would you eat dead plants ? It looks pretty bad.
I guess dried is dead, and looks Ok.

greg

 

[GregS]

In article <hq4ern$mta$1@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>, zekfrivo@zekfrivolous.com (GregS) wrote:

In article <hq33gl$771$1@news.eternal-september.org>, "William Sommerwerck"
grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:
"Standing in front of a microwave is also highly damaging to
your health. Perhaps you have already felt this intuitively?
We know that cells explode in the microwave -- just fry an
egg in your microwave. We are made up of trillions of cells.
So work out how many are getting damaged if you stand in
front of your microwave for 5-10 minutes."

This shows a complete non-understanding of how a microwave oven heats
food -- or why an egg explodes.

In case anyone is wondering... All microwave ovens have a perforated metal
window that reflects microwaves back into the cavity. Virtually no microwave
energy leaks out.

There is always waves leaking out. A little food in the seal will help that.
It might be damaging to the eyes if you were looking in, but you would feel
heat on an other body parts if it were really high. Thats not common at all.
My HeathKit microwave had a conductive plastic outer seal that would
be heat damaged from microwaves. I don't thing the HeathKit used the 1/4
wavelength seal
common on all todays machines. It used a capacitive seal. I have several
leakage detectors, and all
microwaves leak.

Gee, I built that Heathkit 40 years ago.
I got used to microwave cooking a few years prior to that at a friends house.
In my kitchen I got the gas stove/oven (I prefer electric ovens)
One combo turbo/microwave, another microwave, and another turbo oven.

greg

 

[William Sommerwerck]

A fresh kill might be considered live. When I say it's
dead, is it not dead?
I always like to stir up some thought. I eat meat.
Many nutritionists stress eating live plants.
Plant food is alive. Would you eat dead plants?
It looks pretty bad. I guess dried is dead, and looks Ok.

As Spock once said... "Even vegetarians live on death."

 

[Paul Hovnanian P.E.]

klem kedidelhopper wrote:

I was speaking to a friend the other day about microwave cooking and
he told me that he was under the impression that during microwave
heating of food the molecular structure is changed to a state which
may be either carcinogenic or somehow otherwise unhealthful for human
consumption.

More so with plain old cooking (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrosamine)

--
Paul Hovnanian paul@hovnanian.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Have gnu, will travel.

 

[Adrian C]

On 14/04/2010 18:56, Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:

More so with plain old cooking (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrosamine)

It says on that page

"The presence of nitrosamines may be identified by the Liebermann's
reaction"

Er, Jeff ??

--
Adrian C

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

GregS wrote:

In article <4BC52F95.F028B4B2@earthlink.net>, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

GregS wrote:

Heating food can make it taste damm good.
It usually makes eating dead animal meat more tolerable.


You prefer your meat still be alive?

A fresh kill might be considered live.

I wouldn't. It no longer has blood flowing, or a heart beating.

When I say its dead, is it not dead ?
I always like to stir up some thought. I eat meat.
Many nutritionists stress eating live plants.
Plans food is alive. Would you eat dead plants?

Once they are picked, they are dead. They get no water or nutrients
to continue growing.

It looks pretty bad.
I guess dried is dead, and looks Ok.

You've never used dried onions, or tried banana chips?


--
Lead free solder is Belgium's version of 'Hold my beer and watch this!'

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:45:17 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
<arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

So general genetics don't
seem to have been a major player for coronary heart disease, in the case of
his family, although obviously, it's a complex subject, and quirks of fate
in these respects, clearly happen.

Agreed.

Interesting though, how closely he seems to parallel you.

Well, it is possible that a career in RF causes so much stress from
overwork and company politics that a heart attack is probable.
However, that's conjecture.

I wonder if your
other radio club members who died, were 'casual' radio users just from a ham
perspective, or professionals working around this stuff for 10 hours a day
for many years.

Mostly casual but there were two broadcast engineers among the mix.
One of these died from liver cancer, the other from a nasty virus that
literally ate his heart. If you want to get some real RF exposure,
there's nothing like working in a broadcast studio (near the xmitter
tower), or on a mountain top radio site, or at a military radar
station. I had a few years of such exposure back in the 1970's, but
mostly, it's been ocassional yacking on VHF/UHF with minimal power.
Basically, the sample of local hams that have died is not sufficient
to get a decent correlation. The only factoid that're really relevent
is that none of them died from coronary issues. Although I have some
obvious coronary problems, I expect to meet my end in the supermarket
parking lot, run over by some lunatic driving diagonally across the
lanes, thinking all the rules of the road are suspended in the parking
lot.

I wonder if there's any research or collated statistics on
this out on the big bad interweb ?

Actually, yes. There was a study about 10 years ago attempting to
correlate cancers with RF exposure using hams as a population sample.
The results indicated that there was a greater probability of
contracting leukemia if one was involved in ham radio, than the
control group (non-hams). The study was horribly flawed, both in it's
data gathering and sampling methods. I'm too lazy to find it.
<http://www.hamradio-online.com/faq4.html>
Other than mess, I don't know of any studies.

45 years ago, when I first got into ham radio, I had a full head of
hair, a positive attitude, a steady hand, and a fairly decent bank
account. After 45 years of RF exposure, the hear is almost gone, my
attitude is very pessimistic, my hand shakes, and my bank account is
depleted. Obvious, all this must be caused by RF exposure.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:38:36 -0400, PeterD <peter2@hipson.net> wrote:

On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:39:02 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com
wrote:
Moral: Pick you parents wisely.

Almost exactly the same story as Jeff (even the triple bypass at 48).

Hmmm... I'm 62 now and had the operation in 2002, so I made it to 54.

Bad choice in parents certainly contributed in my case, but heart
problems were not common in the family until my generation: my older
sister and I both have had bypass operations, with a low HDL being the
main problem for me.

I'm not all that convinced that cholesterol and coronary heart disease
are directly related. I know of several individuals (including my
former GP doctor) who have fairly high cholesterol levels, but no sign
of any problems (which included an angiogram just to be sure). In my
case, the common thread among the family was high blood pressure. I'm
also not sold on the consensus that statins are a good thing. I've
had 8 years of continuous aches and pains from the statins and finally
decided it was a bad idea.

If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better
care of myself. However, now that I've made it this far, why ruin my
decadent and lavish lifestyle.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:11:14 +0100, Adrian C <email@here.invalid>
wrote:

On 14/04/2010 18:56, Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:
More so with plain old cooking (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrosamine)

It says on that page

"The presence of nitrosamines may be identified by the Liebermann's
reaction"

Er, Jeff ??

He was a distant cousin in Germany. Most of his useful work was done
in the 1880's. He died just before WWI. It's more correctly the
Liebermann–Burchard reaction used to test for the presence of
cholesterol and steroids.

Nitrosamines are formed from the heating of sodium nitrite, used for
red food coloring. Any kind of heating will cause it's production.
However, the "cause" is not the heating. It's the artificial
adulterants added to the meat that are the problem. Note that the
human body can convert nitited (procarcinogens) into nitrosamin, even
if the cooking process does not produce any.

I vaguely recall that barbeque cooking is the worst for nitrosamines,
while microwave cooking produces the least.

MICROWAVE COOKING AND FOOD SAFETY
<http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_rafs/files/microwave_ra_e.pdf>
Well, that doesn't detail it, but it's still interesting reading.


--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

 

[GregS]

In article <4BC6355E.6D58BA25@earthlink.net>, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

GregS wrote:

In article <4BC52F95.F028B4B2@earthlink.net>, "Michael A. Terrell"
mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

GregS wrote:

Heating food can make it taste damm good.
It usually makes eating dead animal meat more tolerable.


You prefer your meat still be alive?

A fresh kill might be considered live.


I wouldn't. It no longer has blood flowing, or a heart beating.


When I say its dead, is it not dead ?
I always like to stir up some thought. I eat meat.
Many nutritionists stress eating live plants.
Plans food is alive. Would you eat dead plants?


Once they are picked, they are dead. They get no water or nutrients
to continue growing.

Funny how potatoes and onions sprount in the fridg. They
may slow down but are not dead. They are officially dead if they dry out
or are consumed by mold.

It looks pretty bad.
I guess dried is dead, and looks Ok.


You've never used dried onions, or tried banana chips?

 

[Adrian C]

On 15/04/2010 14:04, GregS wrote:

Funny how potatoes and onions sprount in the fridg. They
may slow down but are not dead. They are officially dead if they dry out
or are consumed by mold.

Those are seeds! That's life in them!

--
Adrian C

 

[Jeffrey D Angus]

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

45 years ago, when I first got into ham radio, I had a full head of
hair, a positive attitude, a steady hand, and a fairly decent bank
account. After 45 years of RF exposure, the hear is almost gone, my
attitude is very pessimistic, my hand shakes, and my bank account is
depleted. Obvious, all this must be caused by RF exposure.

I still have my hair, but have followed a similar path.
I attribute it to customers that think I should pay them
for the privilege of repairing their equipment. Or for
the other parasites in my life that thought, "He has some-
thing, that I should have instead."

Jeff



--
“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.”
Frank Leahy, Head coach, Notre Dame 1941-1954

http://www.stay-connect.com

 

[Dave Platt]

In article <hq72sv$9fj$2@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu>,
GregS <zekfrivo@zekfrivolous.com> wrote:

Once they are picked, they are dead. They get no water or nutrients
to continue growing.


Funny how potatoes and onions sprount in the fridg. They
may slow down but are not dead. They are officially dead if they dry out
or are consumed by mold.

Or, consider the "Resurrection fern" (Polypodium polypodioides).
Pick it, let it dry out, and it shrivels up, losing up to about 3/4 of
their internal moisture during natural dry spells (and up to 95% or
more under experimental conditions). The cell walls fold up, it
ceases metabilizing... is it dead?

Put it back in water, several years later... and 24 hours later it
will have rehydrated itself, turned green, and it's growing healthily
once again... is it alive?

Or, for a more common example: take seeds. I've got over a dozen
healthy tomato seedlings growing outside, about to be transplanted
into the garden. Most of them were started in February, from seeds I
saved from a previous generation of open-pollenated tomato plants...
back in 1991! They've been in the freezer for almost 20 years, well
dried and then frozen... and I got about 80% germination rates for
most of the varieties.

Were these seeds alive, or dead? How about the plants which sprouted
from them after the seeds were planted?

--
Dave Platt <dplatt@radagast.org> AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

 

[Jerry Peters]

Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:

On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:11:14 +0100, Adrian C <email@here.invalid
wrote:

On 14/04/2010 18:56, Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:
More so with plain old cooking (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrosamine)

It says on that page

"The presence of nitrosamines may be identified by the Liebermann's
reaction"

Er, Jeff ??

He was a distant cousin in Germany. Most of his useful work was done
in the 1880's. He died just before WWI. It's more correctly the
Liebermann?Burchard reaction used to test for the presence of
cholesterol and steroids.

Nitrosamines are formed from the heating of sodium nitrite, used for
red food coloring. Any kind of heating will cause it's production.
However, the "cause" is not the heating. It's the artificial
adulterants added to the meat that are the problem. Note that the
human body can convert nitited (procarcinogens) into nitrosamin, even
if the cooking process does not produce any.

AFAIK Nitrites are used to *preserve* meats, not just add red color.
It then becomes a question of people getting sick or dying from bad
meat now, or possibly dying many years later of cancer.
Personally I limit the amount of cured meats I eat, but do not avoid
it entirely.

I vaguely recall that barbeque cooking is the worst for nitrosamines,
while microwave cooking produces the least.

I thought the high temperature charring created allegedly cancer
causing by-products.

Jerry