Smart Cooks Age Better - The Food Cure: Your Healthy Eating ...

The Microwave: Zapping Away Precious
Nutrients
Is using a microwave harmful to your health Can
it increase the risk for cancer or other diseases
Many believe so.
One thing is for certain—using a microwave
devitalizes your food. And in the long term, this
devitalizes you.
Let’s look at the facts:
Microwaving Destroys Vital, Cancer-Fighting Nutrients: A study
published in the journal Science of Food and Agriculture found that
microwaved broccoli lost up to 97% of its beneficial antioxidants. But
that’s not all. Microwaving is the biggest culprit in destroying cancerfighting
compounds in your vegetables including flavonoids, sinapics and
caffeoyl-quinic derivatives.
Plastic + Microwave=DANGER: Typically, microwaving requires
covering your food. And that covering is usually plastic. On page 29 you’ll
learn about the harmful compounds in plastic that leach into your food
when the plastic molecules are heated to an ―excited‖ state.
Microwaves Reduce Important Enzymes: Microwaving (along with
pasteurizing, irradiating and canning) destroys digestive enzymes.
Microwaves Produce Radiolytic Byproducts: Microwaved food
contains both molecules and energies (called radiolytic byproducts) not
present in food cooked in the way humans have been cooking food for
tens of thousands of generations.
Microwaves Destroy Important Vitamin B12: Microwaving inactivates
vitamin B-12. After just six minutes of microwaving, nearly half of the
vitamin B-12 was destroyed. As you learned earlier (see p. 10), vitamin
B12 is essential for many critical body functions including the formation
of red blood cells, healthy nerve function, DNA manufacture and
reduction of homocysteine—an amino acid which increases the risk for
heart disease and stroke.
Healthier Options: There are so many easy, energy-efficient, time-saving
ways to cook that ensure the potency of your food and offer delicious,
contaminant-free results too. Use these for optimum health (see p. 24-42)
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