Microwaves damage your food quality: myth or fact?
It’s been said that microwaving kills all, or most, existing nutrients in food. Although microwaving does involve radiation, heating meals and vegetables this way does not destroy all the nutrients. Like any method of heating, microwaving can affect the nutrient content to a certain extent — however, it depends on how much you cook it. The advantage of cooking in the microwave is you often don’t need to add a lot of water than if you were boiling vegetables. It’s probably not leaching out as many of the vitamins and minerals. Microwave ovens cook food using waves of energy that are similar to radio waves but shorter. These waves are remarkably selective, primarily affecting water and other molecules that are electrically asymmetrical — one end positively charged and the other negatively charged. Microwaves cause these molecules to vibrate and quickly build up thermal (heat) energy. The best cooking method for retaining nutrients is one that cooks quickly, exposes food to heat for the smallest amount of time and uses only a minimal amount of liquid.
Some nutrients break down when they’re exposed to heat, whether it is from a microwave or a regular oven. Vitamin C is perhaps the clearest example. But because microwave cooking times are shorter, cooking with a microwave does a better job of preserving vitamin C and other nutrients that break down when heated. As far as vegetables go, cooking them in water robs them of some of their nutritional value because the nutrients leach out into the cooking water. Steaming vegetables with microwave steaming is good.
The cooking method that best retains nutrients is one that cooks quickly, heats food for the shortest amount of time, and uses as little liquid as possible. Microwaving meets those criteria. Using the microwave with a small amount of water essentially steams food from the inside out. That keeps in more vitamins and minerals than almost any other cooking method and shows microwave food can indeed be healthy. If you use your microwave with a small amount of water to essentially steam food from the inside, you’ll retain more vitamins and minerals than with almost any other cooking method.
When you cook food in a microwave, cover it tightly, creating an efficient steam environment.
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