Effects of microwaving on food?

Hi Craig

You've partially answered the question yourself. Loss of nutrients from food occurs with heating. Amongst the best examples are vitamin C and Folate. Up to 70% of vitamin C can be lost in the worst case scenario in which food is prepared on a large scale like a large restaurant and left exposed to air etc for prolonged periods. In other studies, steaming food resulted in very little change in any nutrient levels, microwaving resulted in more losses (but in this study only about 10%) and stir frying and boiling resulted in the most (but still only about 25%).

Other nutrients were lost to a lesser extent.

So as you mentioned, cooking in water tends to leach more nutrients.

Having said all of the above, microwaving, if anything decreases nutrient loss versus most other cooking methods besides steaming because the cooking process takes less time and this is one of the main factors that determines nutrient loss.

Microwaves simply cook food by friction rather than by exposing it to heat, so there is nothing "evil" going on, just faster cooking time and actually "less" nutrient loss.

Kind of re-enforces the message to use a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement if you don't eat lots of fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, etc...

Hey Craig. Just wondering if your research has unearthed anything new since you posted this? I've cooked chicken, salmon, cod, steak in the microwave for years and then wondered if the radiation may do any damage on the molecular level. I can find no hard evidence backed by rigouros scientific investigation either way! Only stuff like the Russian's banning microwaves or speculation that it somehow alters proteins somehow. Very frustrating

Not really, but I just did a little search through Google Scholar and found this:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408398209527340

I still use microwaving regularly, as far as I can see, as Mark says, all microwaving does is heat the food up via friction, so I can't see how any of the macro or micronutrients will be destroyed. If you've been seeing results for the past few years whilst still using microwave cooking then obviously it doesn't matter too much!

To be fair I only heat things up in the microwave though, I don't cook anything in there from scratch. I cook everything in the oven etc, let it go cold and then reheat in the microwave when I need it.

Hi Guys

Microwave cooking doesn't use 'radiation', just makes the molecules agitate and rub together, causing friction and thus heat.

Apologies...I never meant to send that!! I'l investigate further and get back to you all....read this though to familiarize yourself with the known dangers....Friction is caused by the radiation which excites the molecules hence my concerns over possible breakage of linked aminos (BCAAs for example......I'm rushing now but will get back on it later
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven