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THE HORRORS OF THE MICROWAVE,
AKA A RADIATION OVEN
I have to admit that I have been procrastinating
on writing this article for more than a year! I have
a confession to make: Even though I know better, as a busy mother with two children, when I am in a rush, I use the microwave. Because there is nothing worse than a hypocrite, I knew when I wrote this article that it would be the end of the microwave in my house. The days of heating up dinner in less than five minutes were gone!
There is really nothing worse that you can do to your food than to microwave it. When we microwave food, we literally change the molecular structure of that food. The human body cannot recognize the unknown byproducts created in a microwave; therefore, it understandably has a hard time metabolizing and digesting.
Not only are we not able to assimilate and absorb the minerals, vitamins and nutrients in that food, but microwaving food creates carcinogens as well as strips food of its nutritional value, decreasing it by 60 to 90 percent in some cases.
In addition, female and male hormones can be shut down or altered by microwaving food. With all the reproductive problems our generation has had, I have to wonder whether the microwave is not a factor. Continually eating food heated in a microwave can possibly cause “shorting out” electrical impulses in the brain. Some even claim that using microwaves might possibly increase the incidence of cancerous tumors and growths and be a contributing factor in the rising incidences of cancers, such as colon cancer, leukemia, breast cancer and the like.
More than 90 percent of Americans have microwaves in their homes. In some homes, people have even stopped using traditional ovens and solely cook their food in microwaves. Stores (even ones that promote healthy living, such as Whole Foods) sell prepackaged vegetables ready to microwave in the plastic bags (the dangers of heating up food in plastic is better left for another article), and unbeknownst to us patrons, many restaurants use microwaves in their kitchens as well.
My mother will probably kill me for revealing this, but I keep thinking of all the stories she told me about how she and all her friends smoked when they were pregnant with us. (And, we are okay, right?) Well, I don’t think most people are using microwaves for convenience knowingly sacrificing their health, and that is why I want to get this information out. Personally, I knew the information was out there, but even I was just not ready to face it.
So, did you know that microwaves are actually just radiation ovens? Microwave ovens use microwaves, a form of electromagnetic energy, much like a radio or light wave, that are very short waves that travel at the speed of light (186,282 miles per second). Every microwave oven contains a magnetron, which is a tube in which electrons are affected by magnetic and electric fields to produce micro wavelength radiation around 2450 megahertz or 2.45 gigahertz.
Food and water molecules have positive and negative polarity, just like a magnet. When we microwave our food, the radiation interacts with the molecules in our food, changing the polarity from positive to negative millions of times each second in a process called ionization. All this agitation within the food causes friction, which damages the molecules, tearing them apart and deforming them, creating heat.
So, your food is hot, but at what cost? Most times, we can’t really tell the quality of the food has been affected. But, have you ever left pasta or some other food in there for too long and been left with a rubbery mess? Whether you can taste it or not, the food that you put in the microwave to heat up is not the same food that you put in. How do we know how this affects our bodies in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years? How does this affect our children’s growing bodies? Fact is, we don’t know. But why take the chance?
Hard to believe, but it gets scarier…do you know who created the microwave? The Nazis—for use in their mobile support operations when invading Russia. After the war, the Allies discovered documents related to the microwave, which are now classified with the United States Department of War. The Russians also obtained the research, and it should be no surprise that the Soviets banned the use of the microwave in 1976, issuing a warning on the health hazards, both biological and ecological, of the microwave! But why haven’t we?
You can come to your own conclusions, but as a mother of two beautiful children, I am steering clear of the microwave and giving mine away!
Katherine Pennington is a holistic health counselor and founder of Be in Balance, which helps women and men lose weight, reduce stress and achieve more balance in their lives. Additionally, Katherine runs a cooking program for kids and their moms called Kids in the Kitch, in which she helps mothers and fathers cook healthier meals for their families as well as works one-on-one with children. Katherine is also an avid runner and marathoner and advises athletes on how to fuel for maximum performance and health.
Katherine graduated from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition/Columbia Teachers College and is a member of the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. Additionally, Katherine is a founding member of Women for Family Nutrition (www.wffn.org).
Katherine resides in New York City and is the mother to two beautiful children.
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