Social Media Is Wrong About Microwave Ovens
The microwave is convenient. Too convenient, perhaps. So convenient that some of us are suspicious of them. When these common appliances were new to the kitchen, there were objections to the supposedly unnatural way of heating food – remember that urban legend about the girl who boiled her brain trying to dry her hair because microwaves “cook from the inside out”?
Over the past decades, the myths about the microwave have mostly been dispelled – or so it seemed to me. But since nothing is too crazy to believe these days, some of them are making a comeback. A social media influencer recently posted a video of himself cooking food for his child in the microwave and was met with comments saying that the microwave “deprives the food of all its nutrients!”
It’s not just this guy’s followers. Microwave misinformation is spreading on TikTok in particular. Here’s a clip that calls microwaved food “the best way to kill yourself, really, really fast.”
So what’s the deal? Are microwaves dangerous? Is food prepared in them less healthy than food prepared in other ways?
Does Microwaving Food Destroy Nutrients?
No. Or at least it doesn’t do anything to the nutrients that cooking the other way wouldn’t.
Microwaves don’t magically cook food. They heat water molecules and then hot or warm water helps to warm the rest of the food. Think of it like putting food in a bain-marie, like when you thaw a packet of sauce by dropping it into a mug of hot water.
What happens to the nutrients during this process? Well, different ways of cooking can affect nutrients in different ways, it’s true. When food is boiled, some nutrients can get into the water , but this is not a problem here, because the water that is heated is part of the food itself. Some vitamins begin to break down after a long exposure to high heat, but it is difficult to completely destroy them. In fact, since microwave cooking is so fast, it is considered one of the best ways to preserve the nutrients in food .
There is some evidence that microwaves can reduce the amount of vitamin C in food by 20–30%, according to Healthline , but the same article also notes that boiling can reduce vitamin C by 50% and stir-frying can “significantly reduce Vitamin C content in vegetables. Each cooking method has its drawbacks, but microwave cooking is just as good as the others.
Do microwave ovens expose us to radiation?
Technically yes, but not in the way you think.
When we worry about radiation, we think about ionizing radiation, which comes from X-rays and nuclear bombs. People and objects exposed to ionizing radiation can (in some cases) become radioactive themselves, which is a big part of why this type of radiation is so dangerous.
But microwaves are non- ionizing radiation. Other types of non-ionizing radiation include visible light, ultraviolet light, and infrared waves from a heat lamp. They also include radio waves in all their forms. Here are some examples: waves that come from radio towers and are picked up by your car radio, waves that are transmitted by one walkie-talkie in a set and picked up by another, and waves that come from your radio. Wi-Fi hotspots and which are accepted by your phone or computer. (By the way, microwave ovens operate at a frequency very similar to that of Wi-Fi; therefore, a microwave oven with a damaged screen can cause your Wi-Fi connection to fail .)
So, no, microwave ovens don’t produce “radiation” in the spooky (ionizing) sense, and they don’t make your food radioactive. There is no health hazard here.
Why can’t you heat baby formula in the microwave?
If microwaves are so safe, why are we sometimes told not to heat baby formula or baby food in the microwave? It’s not that the microwave spoils the food, but that it can heat the food unevenly . If there are hot spots in the bottle or bowl of food and it is not fully mixed before giving it to the baby, the baby may get too hot formula. If you’ve ever cooked food in a microwave, you’re probably familiar with this phenomenon. It is better to warm the bottle in a bath of hot water, the better it will warm up evenly.