Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Is Microwaving Food Bad for You? What 23 Studies Have to Say

Episode Date: March 29, 2019

Since the first affordable microwave ovens arrived in 1967, they’ve become an indispensable tool in most people’s kitchens. They’re one of the quickest, easiest, and, compared to open flame, safest ways to cook food. Or maybe not. Some say that microwaves make your food “radioactive” and release toxic radiation, which raises your risk of cancer. Others say that microwaves destroy the nutrients in food, which could increase your risk of nutrient deficiencies. And still others say there isn’t enough research on microwaves, so we should all play it safe and avoid them. On the other hand, people say that the claims against microwaves are unfounded. They’re just one more example of better living through science that people need to stop handwringing about. So, who’s right? Well, despite the constant Internet fearmongering, there’s no evidence that microwaves are dangerous. They have been studied repeatedly, and not only are they safe, they may actually be a healthier way to cook some foods. There are legitimate concerns about microwaving plastic containers, but it’s still debatable how dangerous that is, too. In this podcast, you’re going to learn the top four reasons people say that you shouldn’t microwave food, why they’re wrong, and why microwaving food can actually be a safer, healthier option than other cooking methods. Let’s get started. Mentioned on The Show: My interview with Anthony Jay: https://www.muscleforlife.com/low-testosterone-estrogen-podcast/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for men, bigger,, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that are keeping you from achieving the lean, muscular, strong, and healthy body that you truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male body, then you want to read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger,

which you can find on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can get the audiobook 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audiobooks. I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend doing stuff like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth, so much more valuable and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, then simply go to www.bitly.com slash free BLS. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just click the sign up today and save button, create your account and voila, you get to listen to Bigger,

Leaner, Stronger for free. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let's get to the show. Hello, hello. Welcome to another video podcast. I'm Mike Matthews from Legion Athletics, and this is going to be about microwaving food. Specifically, I'm going to answer some of the more common questions I get about microwaves and microwaving food, like is the radiation produced by a microwave dangerous? Does it make your food radioactive or less nutritious? Does it leach chemicals from the containers that you microwave the food in and so forth? And fortunately, there is a fair amount of research available on the topic. And the current weight of the evidence is that microwaving your food is not dangerous. Microwaves are not dangerous. And

in fact, in some cases, it's actually a better way to cook some foods because it helps retain more of their nutrients. That said, if you want to play it safe, so to speak, then you want to microwave your food in glass or ceramic containers because chemicals can leach from plastic containers into your food. Before we get to that though, let's do a little myth debunking. Let's start with the claim that microwaves release harmful radiation that makes your food radioactive. And the first problem here is the word radiation because yes, microwaves do produce radiation and that is how they cook your food. And most people associate radiation with A-bombs, Chernobyl, burning, painful death, cancer, and so forth. What they don't know though, is that radiation really is a broad term that refers to

anything on the electromagnetic spectrum. And just about everything around us emits some level of radiation, including the lights above our heads, the ground beneath our feet, and of course the screen that you're watching right now. Now the key here is understanding that radiation waves have two distinct characteristics. They have sizes and they have frequencies. So the size would be the measure of the wave from peak to peak, and the frequency would be the amount of cycles that occur per second. So on one end of the spectrum, you have large, low frequency radiation like radio waves, and those are not harmful to our bodies, at least for the most part. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have much smaller, much more high frequency waves like x-rays, for example. And when you go to the extreme, you have gamma rays. Now those can be very harmful to the body. Now you may have

also heard of the terms ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. And so what that is, is non-ionizing radiation is radiation that doesn't damage atoms, it just excites them. It makes them wiggle around faster, whereas ionizing radiation actually damages atoms. And so the larger, lower frequency wavelengths are non-ionizing and the smaller higher frequency ones are ionizing. Now microwaves are on the electromagnetic spectrum. The radiation used by the microwave oven is using a larger lower frequency wavelength. In terms of exactly where on the spectrum, it's actually you have the largest, lowest frequency wavelengths or radio waves. And then next are microwaves. And for example, you have to go a couple rungs further in terms of smaller size, higher frequency to get to the visible light that we see around us. Now, as I just mentioned, non-ionizing radiation, which is the type of radiation emitted or produced by a microwave, a microwave oven, it doesn't damage

atoms. It doesn't damage molecules. It excites them. It makes them move faster. And so how a microwave oven actually works is it's designed to trap the radiation waves in the little box because the further they travel, the weaker they become. That's why cell towers are not cooking our food for us. And then the water in our food absorbs these radiation waves and heats up. And that's why, for example, if you microwave glass, it doesn't heat up. You see, most molecules are not affected by the radiation produced by the microwave oven, but water is. And so it works great for heating up food and beverages. Now, because a microwave oven does not produce ionizing radiation, it cannot make your food radioactive

because that is what is necessary for anything to be radioactive. It needs to be emitting ionizing radiation. Now, you might be wondering about radiation leaking out of the microwave. And if that is happening, is it bad for you? Well, one, no, it's not happening. Assuming you have a well-built functioning microwave, because they come with metal shielding to prevent that, to keep the radiation in the oven. And that's not very hard to do because the radiation wavelength is quite large. It's about five inches wide. And two, it probably wouldn't be all that harmful even if it were happening because the radiation waves would be so dispersed. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of

word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. Okay. Let's tackle another myth, which is that microwaving your food kills the nutrients in it or drastically reduces its nutritional value. Now, this one's ironic because research shows that while microwaving can slightly reduce the nutritional content of certain foods, it's

actually one of the best ways for preserving the nutritional value of many other foods. Now, the reason for that is all forms of cooking reduce its nutritional value somewhat because you're either heating it up and evaporating some of the water and that takes nutrients with it, or you are boiling it and inevitably some of the nutrients are going to leach out of the food and into the water. So if you boil vegetables, for example, that'd be a bit weird in some cases, but there are some vegetables that maybe you would boil that is going to reduce the nutritional value more than let's say steaming or microwaving because microwaves cook food quickly. So the less time the food is cooking, the less time there is for nutrients to leach out, and it doesn't result in very much food or food water evaporation. So the bottom line here is microwaving your food does not reduce its nutritional value much more than traditional

forms of cooking, and in some cases actually results in more nutritious food. Okay, another myth here is that microwaving food in plastic containers turns it into a toxic soup of chemicals, makes it poisonous. Now, this one is not entirely wrong because there are toxic chemicals in plastics. The two most common types that you've probably heard of are bisphenols like bis bisphenol A or BPA, and phthalates. And these chemicals mimic estrogen in the body, which is why a number of observational studies have associated them with various problems like weight gain, infertility, cancer, and other dysfunctions and diseases. And so it is smart to limit your exposure to these chemicals. And research does show that heating up food or beverages in plastics does result in some of these chemicals leaching from the container into the food or beverage. And also the more you use

an individual container or maybe a cup if you are boiling water for oatmeal or tea or whatever, the more chemicals are released over time. That said, according to current safety guidelines, the amounts are very small. hundred to a thousand times the amount that is present in food after being microwaved in a plastic container to reach levels that are currently understood to cause problems. That said, more and more research is being done on these chemicals and they may indeed be more harmful than current safety guidelines would indicate. And we can be exposed to these chemicals in many different ways. So while it could be true that the amount of these chemicals contained in the food that you just microwaved is too low to matter by itself, if you are being exposed to the same types of chemicals in many other ways, they are adding to that total exposure, which can cause problems over time.

So personally, I do think it's smart to take simple steps to limit our exposure to these types of chemicals. And as far as microwaving food goes, that means microwaving in glass or ceramic containers. If you do that, you don't have to worry about it. And if you want to learn more about these chemicals and how they may or may not be impacting your body and what you can do to minimize your exposure to them, check out the podcast episode number 166 that I recorded with Anthony Jay. It's all about all of that. Okay. The next myth is that microwaving kills your food. And of course, this is just kind of riding the coattails of the radiation fears because as far as most people are concerned, radiation just kills things, right? And the truth here is most of the foods that we are eating are completely dead by the time they are going into our mouths. The plant foods that we eat start

dying the minute they are harvested and the cells in the animal products that we eat, whether it's meat or milk or whatever, start dying soon after the animal dies and frozen foods are dead long before they reach our plates. And that's okay because how dead or alive food is doesn't have much of an impact on how healthful it is to eat. In the end, so long as we can get the nutrients that we need from the food, it's totally fine if it has been dying for two months before reaching our mouths. And how we cook it doesn't change that. It doesn't make it worse. It doesn't completely kill the food and kill all the nutrients. It just doesn't work like that. And while it's true that some nutrients in food do degrade sooner and faster than others, for example, antioxidants

in let's say fruits and vegetables tend to go faster than other nutrients, but that is true regardless of how we cook the foods. And furthermore, it's not a big deal because we can get all the antioxidants we need by eating reasonable amounts of dead slash dying nutritious foods. We don't need a home garden where we pick the vegetables and eat them on the same day to get enough antioxidants. pick the vegetables and eat them on the same day to get enough antioxidants. So the bottom line here is decades of research and basic physics tells us that microwaving your food is not dangerous. It is not going to harm your health. It is not going to harm your food. It is safe. It's convenient. And if you want to make it maximally safe, then microwave in glass or ceramic containers. And if you want your food to taste better and if you want to get better at cooking or maybe even

learn to enjoy cooking, which then of course results in even better and better food because the better you get in the kitchen, the better your meals turn out. Of course, that's not the case with the microwave. Then yeah, cook traditionally. Use the oven, use the stove. But if you are in a pinch or you didn't have time to meal prep or maybe the meal that you brought to work or the meal that you want to make for the week and bring to work, maybe for your lunches needs to be heated up, but you don't have a proper kitchen setup to heat it up in a pot. Or if you want to incorporate microwaving into just traditional cooking to speed things up, don't feel bad about it. It's totally fine. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better.

I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff

that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for men, bigger, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that are keeping you from achieving the lean, muscular, strong, and healthy body that you truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male body, then you want to read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which you can find on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can get the audiobook 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that

you do if you're not currently listening to audiobooks. I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend doing stuff like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth so much more valuable and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, then simply go to www.bitly.com slash free BLS. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just click the sign up today and save button, create your account and voila, you get to listen to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for free.