Do Microwaves Destroy Nutrients?

Do Microwaves Destroy Nutrients?

Producer Potts  0:16  

is my microwave killing all my nutrients, this is what I need to know. Because my friend told me if I’m microwaving my food that all of my nutrients are just useless. And you know, I just don’t like cooking that much, so the microwave is my friend. So what’s the real deal with this?

Dr. Sarah  0:31  

You are not killing nutrients, or hopefully anything else. But definitely only food should go into a microwave. So let’s, let’s start there. So we don’t use microwaves to dry off. Chickens, like the inlet life, there’s a difference between, I think, where all of these rumors come from about a microwave being so terrible is how scary the word radiation is.

Dr. Sarah  1:00  

Radiation is like we associate it with atomic weapons, right? Like radiation is this word that has all of these like, it just brings up all these scary images. But in physics, radiation just means light energy in a wave coming out of a source. That’s all that’s all it means, right? So like, a rainbow is also radiation. So radiation, light is a form of radiation, radio waves. So radios are these things that used to exist that you could turn on. And people would talk, and music would happen. Kind of like kind of like, our phones can play music. But in the olden days, we couldn’t choose what we would listen to. But like radio waves are a form of radiation, and so are microwaves. And where radiation becomes scary types of radiation like atomic bomb radiation, versus completely harmless radiation, like radio waves, like microwaves, is this line, above which we call it ionizing radiation, and below which we call it non ionizing radiation. So ionizing radiation has enough energy to basically knock an electron out of the orbit of an atom and turn that atom into an ion. So it basically changes the molecular form of that that atom and that can, if you know, we’re being irradiated with that radiation caused damage, I think, you know, anything from slightly increasing cancer risk, you know, if it’s a very, very small amount of radiation to radiation, sickness and death, right, like, it can be all the way to that extreme, depending on how much radiation and how energetic it is. All forms of non ionizing radiation, they don’t have enough energy to knock an electron out of orbit, or around the nucleus of an atom. So they don’t, it just doesn’t have enough energy to transform these atoms into ions, which is great news, because that’s the type of energy that we use for microwaves. The way that a microwave heats food is by causing polar molecules. So these are molecules that have like a side of it that is positively charged on the side of it that’s negatively charged, overall, like water to vibrate. So they just cause all these molecules to start dancing. And then, you know, you get hot when you start dancing, right? So do water molecules, they start dancing, and they work up a sweat. And that is the heat that is generated in a microwave. It’s not just water molecules, it’s all types of polar molecules. But that’s how microwaves generate heat. And the way that any molecules get transformed in a microwave because it will legit kill, like active enzymes in your food. But it’s not because the microwaves are doing it, the microwaves do not have enough energy to transform those molecules. It’s the heat that’s doing it. So when you build up enough heat, that can cause proteins to unravel, that’s called denaturing. It’s also called cooking, right? So it is the exact same molecular transformations that happen to food when you cook them in any other method. And it’s the transformations that happen from applying heat, not from radiation. So yes, you’re not going to have live active enzymes in your food. But if you had steamed that broccoli on the stovetop, you’d have the exact same effect as if you steamed it in a bowl in your microwave. So the transformations are just the transformations due to heat.

Producer Potts  4:54  

Gotcha. So basically if you are worried about using a microwave, then you should just be eating a raw food diet if you’re that worried about it.

Dr. Sarah  5:05  

If you want live enzymes in your food, they’re okay. There are some enzymes that are kind of cool in our food. So speaking of broccoli, broccoli has this enzyme in it called myrosinase. That converts. So there it’s it’s stored in a different compartment inside the cell of the glucosinolates. So glucosinolates are the class of phytonutrients in vegetables that are in the cabbage family, cruciferous vegetables, that do all these amazing things for our health, right reduce risk of cancer, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, some of them reduce risk of type two diabetes, some of them reduce risk of neurodegenerative disease, like Alzheimer’s, like they’re so they’re so great. But they’re not great until they meet the myrosinase enzyme, and they undergo enzymatic breakdown into isothiocyanates. So glucosinolates are not actually a really good thing. The really good thing is after glucosinolates and myrosinase, get together and make isothiocyanates. So like I like sulforaphane isn’t isothiocyanate. So sulforaphane is probably one that some people will have heard of. So that enzyme is really good. And that’s like, why, like doing things like chopping up your broccoli and letting it sit on the counter before you cook, it can actually cause there to be more sulforaphane than if you cook it. Cool. That being said, the enzyme is cool. We do get more benefit from broccoli, if we just like, eat it raw and chew it. But we do have some gut bacteria that make that enzyme. So we don’t like that we still get a lot of the benefits. If we’re eating the vegetable cooked. It’s just actually we get more if we eat them raw. So some enzymes do have some cool health benefits. Even if you’re indirect, it’s not because it’s not the myrosinase itself that is benefiting us. It’s what it does when it meets glucosinolates that benefits us. But live enzymes as a general rule are not particularly there. It’s not like they get into our bloodstream and still continue to do things inside. Like these enzymes are just proteins that have a job. And we break down proteins on our digestive tract. So anything that they’re going to do that’s good for us would be things related to digestion, not things related to things like biochemistry inside our bodies.

Producer Potts  7:25  

Gotcha. So basically, use the microwave, don’t use the microwave, eat veggies raw, don’t eat veggies raw, do what you like, or do a mix doesn’t. Is it obligatory? Well, that’s great. So where can people learn more about glucosinolates? Is that what you said? I don’t even know if I pronounced that word correctly. Like all that is so interesting. I didn’t know that. So where can people dive into learning more about that and like also, like about microwaves and cooking and all that stuff?

Dr. Sarah  7:52  

You did a great job with glucose and lights. So it was very secret. I think that’s how it’s pronounced. I don’t actually know. I just say it really confidently and then make it sound like I know how it’s pronounced. But maybe it’s blue. What else could be glucosinolates. Blue cup anyways. So glucosinolates is one of the nutrients that’s featured in my new book. And I very specifically talk about the ways that eating, getting more glucosinolates from foods, like eating more broccoli, or cabbage or kale actually reduces cancer risk. So that’s one of the biggest benefits of eating that family of vegetables. So that is the analysis that I do in this book. So part two of my book goes through 27 differences like connections between one specific nutrient and risk or like symptomology of one common condition. So glucosinolates are covered here, but so is the safety of microwaves, including an analysis of nutrients. It’s not actually nutrient loss and microwaving. Microwaving actually has some of the best nutrient retention of any cooking method because it’s a low water cooking method. So we actually get more like if you were to Steam your broccoli in the microwave, you’ll have more nutrients per bite of broccoli, than if you Steam your broccoli on the stovetop and that’s