Your microwave is killing your nutrients

Photo: Billy's Planet

More than 95 percent of American homes own a microwave! This says a lot about our desires for a quick, convenient meal. Looking at the bigger picture, this isn’t entirely our fault. Our world has evolved into a fast paced race against time, and it doesn’t help that half the food in the grocery stores are packaged in plastic for quick consumption.

I’ve always been really sensitive to microwaves, I can feel the radiation emitting off of them and usually leave the room if one is on.

Here are five reasons why they are worth getting rid of:

Microwaves zap food nutrition

Heating your food in the microwave strips away its original nutrients. The high frequencies emitted from a microwave force the water molecules to rapidly spin, creating friction which heats the food in a short amount of time. This completely changes the molecular structure of the food itself.

Dr. Joseph M. Mercola, a licensed physician writes that the dielectric heat in the microwave bounces around and is absorbed in the food until it evolves into a sort of ‘dead food’. The nutritional value greatly diminishes the longer the food absorbs the radiation.

Microwaves destroy breast milk and vitamin B-12

In a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers examined the effects of microwave heating on the loss of vitamin B-12 in foods like raw beef, pork, and milk. The results of the study show there was a 30 to 40 percent loss of the vitamin when the foods received microwave exposure. What they found was the natural chemicals in vitamin B-12 became virtually inactive after the microwave heating process.

Researchers tested 22 freshly frozen human milk samples for lysozyme activity and antibodies by heating the samples for 30 seconds on either a low or high power setting. Breast milk microwaved at high temperatures was found to have greater E coli growth — 18 more times than un-microwaved breast milk. Microwaving at low temperatures also dramatically decreased lysozyme activity and also promoted the growth of harmful bacteria for babies.