Re: Microwaved food

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

Hi all; on a break from teaching, and am hunting down microwave safety
references. Thanks to Marshall for the web search; I found some of the same
stuff, but may need to get into a university database (Medline,
ArticleFirst) to do better. There's some info at

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/microwave.html
http://www.mercola.com/article/microwave/hazards.htm

but they blend science and pseudoscience quite liberally; beware. They draw
a lot of unwarranted conclusions about food from Russian and Nazi military
radar experiments (as Marshall warned), and attribute illness, death, and
toxic byproducts to microwaves that could be simply due to overheating of
the substances. One nurse microwaved a bag of blood to warm it, which killed
the patient who received it, and the New Age health newsletters went nuts
about that. But microwaves are notorious for uneven heating, and the blood
may simply have been cooked in spots (how horrible), which would surely do
serious harm. That's typical of the sloppy thinking on those sites, so
beware. The suppressed Swiss study looks interesting (they saw unhealthy
changes in cholesterol levels), but without seeing the raw data and the
methods, I'm not willing to draw any conclusions about it. It was done at a
macrobiotics center, so they've got a bias that may be reflected in the
design.

I s'pose we're getting a bit OT from permaculture here, but it's
interesting how little research has been published on the subject, seeing as
how microwaves are ubiquitous. Somebody needs to determine if conventional
ovens also produce similar byproducts, for comparison (you'd think the
industry would have, and maybe they're just not talking, a bad sign).  And
I'm still looking for the kitten study--at least we know it exists. I found
a mention of it in one of my wife's veterinary books, but they don't give a
reference; that doesn't help.

Toby