I haven't tossed out our Microwave. Yet, I have NOT been using the microwave function to heat food for more than five years. It was a Combi and we only used it to heat in a classic way. Half a year ago, I had the opportunity to receive a classic oven. The combi microwave oven then received a difficult to reach storage place in our garage. I could toss it out or give it to friends who don't object of course, but we envisaged to use it's classical heating function in case we were plagued with a heat wave (so that the garage and not the kitchen would receive the extra heat), or when a second oven is handy in case we invite a lot of people. In my wild fantasies though, I also imagined I'd carry the heavy microwave box in front of my belly, hanging around my neck with an attached belt. After bypassing the door safety, and changing the faraday cage into a sort of canon, I could bring down black heli's and Ufo's and such, while making those typical beep beep beep sounds that usual come with a microwave.
Serious now. A friend who does a PhD in chemistry, says he's using his microwave for two purposes, and two purposes only :
1) to heat the water in a cup of tea, BEFORE adding the tea.
2) As a convenient container to better PRESERVE his bread.
In his laboratory, they are using microwaves to shorten certain chemical reactions from 30 hours and longer to a meagre four hours. This is NOT a temperature effect.
These microwaves are distributed unevenly. Therefore, the induced vibrations can become soo high locally that it almost must result to some phenomena that are not seen with heating due to physical contact with something that is warmer. Here are some of these phenomena:
Killing of cells and microorganisms,
but not to the point that all are killed. So it can not be used to sterilise except when microwaving to the point that one boils the sample, as in classic heating. This phenomenon explains the deadly accident wherein blood was heated to 37 degrees C with microwaves.
Denatures antibodies and other factors that are important in breast milk,
to the point that they have lost their functionality. This does not happen when you warm the breast milk in a bain-marie.
Racemisation of amino acids,
wherein the L-forms, which are the building blocks for proteins, are transformed to their mirror like D- forms and vice versa.
The natural L-proline which is most sensitive to such racemisation, flips over to its mirror like molecule, D-proline, which is a direct neurotoxic. Also, ANY D-amino acid will still be recognised by our protein synthesis machinery (ribosomes and such). Proteins are nothing but a long sequence of consecutive amino acids connected between the carboxyl of the first and the amine of the second amino acid. Thermodynamics determines the 3D conformation that a protein will adopt as it is being build. Thus, whenever a mirror-like D-proline is build into a protein where there should be an L-proline, the protein as a whole will become distorted beyond recognition. What will the symptoms be like ?
Proline is very abundant in collagen, which is mainly a repetition of Glycine - Proline - Proline.
It is also highly abundant in casein, the main protein in milk. Therefore mothers ...
Homolytic cleavages and free radical production.
One could speculate that the pinpoint concentration of high vibratory energy could also result in certain homolytic cleavages of molecules. This is contrary to the usual hydrolytic cleavages (which are heterolytic) that are due to chemical reaction with water, sped up due to classic temperature increase and which result in natural building blocks. Homolytic cleavages are more random, and always result in two building blocks that are usually not occuring in nature. Both of such building blocks will always carry a free radical, which will want to react with any other molecule it encounters resulting in further unnatural compounds. There's also the problem of the free radicals that are unable to react because they are protected from the environment as they were formed in cryptic pockets within macromolecules such as proteins.
These homolytic cleavages are usually ascribed to ionising radiation (UV and beyond such as X-ray, gamma ray, cosmic rays). This is what makes FOOD IRRADIATION in order to sterilise totally irresponsible in my view. In one breath, it is usually said that microwaves, being non- ionizing radiation, can not result in free-radical formation, and random homolytic cleavage of covalent bonds as the energy of single photons is not high enough to break such covalent bond.
I am not so sure though. Think about all the waves on the oceans. By chance, now and then a massive killer wave can form that has sunk several big ships. For long, they were only hear say, but now it is known that they do happen. Now, go back to the food sample that you want to microwave. Food has exceptional long molecules in it. Is it not conceivable that due to shearing forces, and pull and push, local energies are high enough that a covalent bond has to give in? What happens when you tear a plastic foil? You will see that long stretches of the plastic polymers will slide over each other, and that now and then, you will break a covalent bond with formation of a free radical. What happens when you make a whip crack by lashing it?
So I figuratively tossed out the microwave.
To put it on a scale, I still think that food irradiation is way more toxic.
Also, when I have to refresh the water of my aquarium during winter time (have to do it about four times a year), I heated the water with the microwave oven. I knew that this killed a lot of organisms in the rainwater that I use for this. The effect on the fish is that they become much more lively, strutting their colours even more as they always do when they receive new water, microwaved or not. By now, they even procreated to the point that it became visible, or that, in other words, they didn't eat all of their descendants.
