An empty bracket is affixed to my wall in the kitchen. An appliance that rapidly heated and cooked my food used to be inside that bracket. That appliance which is a microwave oven now resides in my basement. Like a majority of the population, I own a microwave oven and it works well for me. But then after years of hearing about the negative aspects of using a microwave oven, I conducted some in-depth research and discovered that there were pros and cons to having one in the household. One positive aspect and the most popular in my opinion is that it heats up your food within a couple of minutes or seconds depending on what you are cooking. Another plus for this appliance is that hours of waiting for frozen meat to thaw out is cut down to minutes because of the microwave’s defrost mode.

But what raised an eyebrow with me is that when the food is being defrosted, heated up or cooked by a microwave oven, the molecular structure of the food is altered by the process of electromagnetic radiation. In other words, the heat that is cooking your food is actually friction that is generated in your food’s molecular structure.

To convince you that friction is a main factor here, let’s conduct a scientific experiment. All of us that actually took “science” in school knows that friction generates heat. So put the palm of your hands together and proceed to rub them as hard and as fast as you can. Now see what happens. The outcome of this brief experiment is going to conclude with the palm of your hands getting hot. The same concept applies to food that is cooked in your microwave oven. So when the microwave is on and your desired food is cooking, friction between the atoms of the food start vibrating at a fast rate which actually creates the heat.

If the molecular makeup of the food product is altered because of the electromagnetic radiation the microwave oven generates, the value of the nutrients in the food are decreased. Back in the day when the microwave oven was popular with me, I must admit that I knew about radiation being involved with this appliance but I had no idea that it could be decreasing the nutrients within the food.

I’m very health conscious so I don’t want any nutrients decreased or altered in anything that I consume. The value of the food being altered is what lead up to me researching the use of microwave ovens and its possible dangers. This is a discussion that will continue in Part 2 of why “I fired my microwave oven”.