Minutus

The science fair experiment with the microwaved water on plants is thoroughly and rather scientifically (with a kinda double-blind experiment) debunked on Snopes.com. t
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From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Robert & Shannon Nelson
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 11:09 AM
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Researching Fungus Fungi
Hi Irene,
Trying to track down some vague memories, I found this interesting piece. What I was trying to track down had to do with changes in nutritional content, findings that certain nutrients are preserved by microwaving, while others are depleted. I haven't found that yet...
Then I read somewhere recently that someone had experimented with two identical plants, raising one with regular tap water, and the other with microwaved tap water. It suggested that microwaved water is not a good thing for plants--but certainly a personal experiment involving only two plants can't be taken as proof.

But what I found was far more interesting, and also far more damning. I would be interested in your thoughts?

------------------------
From http://www.relfe.com/microwave.html

[...]

There have been very few scientific studies done on the effect of eating food microwaved food. This is rather surprising when you think about the fact that microwaves have been with us for only a few decades - and that in that time the incidence of many diseases has continued to increase.

Two researchers, Blanc and Hertel, confirmed that microwave cooking significantly changes food nutrients. Hertel previously worked as a food scientist for several years with one of the major Swiss food companies. He was fired from his job for questioning procedures in processing food because they denatured it. He got together with Blanc of the Swiss Federal Institute of Biochemistry and the University Institute for Biochemistry.

They studied the effect that microwaved food had on eight individuals, by taking blood samples immediately after eating. They found that after eating microwaved food, haemoglobin levels decreased. "These results show anaemic tendencies. The situation became even more pronounced during the second month of the study".

Who knows what results they would have found if they had studied people who ate microwaved food for a year or more?

The violent change that microwaving causes to the food molecules forms new life forms called radiolytic compounds. These are mutations that are unknown in the natural world. Ordinary cooking also causes the formation of some radiolytic compounds (which is no doubt one reason why it is better to eat plenty of raw food), but microwaving cooking causes a much greater number. This then causes deterioration in your blood and immune system.

In addition, they found that the number of leucocytes increases after eating microwaved food - something which haematologists take very seriously, because this is often a sign of highly harmful effects, such as poisoning.

Also, after eating microwaved food, cholesterol levels increased. Hertel said "Common scientific belief states that cholesterol values usually alter slowly over longer periods of time. In this study, the markers increased rapidly after the consumption of the microwaved vegetables." He believes his study tends to confirm new scientific data that suggest cholesterol may rapidly increase in the blood secondary to acute stress. "Also," he added, "blood cholesterol levels are less influenced by cholesterol content of food than by stress factors. Such stress-causing factors can apparently consist of foods which contain virtually no cholesterol - the microwaved vegetables."

The results were published in "Search for Health" in the Spring of 1992. How was this research greeted? A powerful trade organisation, the Swiss Association of Dealers for Electroapparatuses for Households and Industry somehow made the President of the Court of Seftigen issue a `gag order'. Hertel and Blanc were told that if they published their findings they would face hefty fines or up to one year in prison. In response to this, Blanc recanted his findings. Hertel, on the other hand, went on a lecture tour and demanded a jury trial.

FINALLY, in 1998 the Court `Gag Order' was removed. In a judgment delivered at Strasbourg on 25 August 1998 in the case of Hertel v. Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights held that there had been a violation of Hertel's rights in the 1993 decision. The Court decided that the `gag order' prohibiting him form declaring that microwaved food is dangerous to health was contrary to the right to freedom of expression. In addition, Switzerland was sentenced to pay compensation of F40,000.

In Summary: Blanc and Hertel found that eating microwaved food:

* Increases cholesterol
* Increases white blood cell numbers
* Decreases red blood cell numbers
* Causes production of radiolytic compounds (compounds unknown in nature)
Finrod wrote:

No there is no such evidence.
Microwave cooking is simply heating.
Whatever heat does, it does whether by microwave or any other heating
method. Temperature is what counts. Overcooking by microwave or any
other method, will cause problems.

Yes well and truly debunked.
http://www.snopes.com/science/microwave/plants.asp

Regards

Soroush

Thank you!
That's reassuring, tho certainly doesn't do away with all of the
concerns.

Robert & Shannon Nelson wrote:

No offence but it is an old wives tale based on long disproved
assumptions. It keeps "doing the rounds" as does a lot of other nonsense
people have invented about microwaves.

Microwaves produce heat - nothing more, nothing less.
Whatever heat does, will be done with microwaves or anything else that
produces heat - so to understand ALL the issues you need only look at
what heat can do.

ALL the supposed comparison issues that have come up, have nothing to do
with heat, and everything to do with heat damage to the containers used.
The lack of understanding of what heat does to containers, has been a
mahjor learing curve in using microwave techniology.

Examples:
Stoneware pots often contain lead. In the microwave, lead heats to
melting, and leaches into food or water heated.
Many plastics contain very toxic chemicals that when heated, leach into
food, causing everything from vomiting to cancer.
And the list goes on....

The point is that the damage is due to heat, not microwaves.
Heated lead-containing stoneware will cause the same problems if heated
any other way - same with plastics.
The assumption that any plastic or stoneware etc that FELT cool was okay
in the microwave, was a very wrong assumption, just as it would be if
heated some other way. Just because the entire container does not get
hot, does not mean some part of it gets hot, melts and contaminates the
food.

Moral of the story - do not compare things cooked in the microwave with
things cooked in a regular oven, unless you use the same cookware.
That was not done in ANY of the old wives tales used to discredit
microwaves as something other than a heat producing technique when it
comes to food and drink.

The other old wives tales come from ridiculous things like microwaving
blood and wondering why it does not act like live blood. Well if you
oven-cooked it, the same would apply.
A VERY old tale, long since repeated over and over with no such
nonsensical results. If there ever was such an experiment with the
claimed results - I can not find the original, just a claim that it
occurred - it would need to demonstrate identical containers in the
microwave and oven, and I'll eat my hat if that occurred:-)
Same problem - and same VERY old story doing the rounds.
That's baloney.
The guy is obviously minus something - education in physics and
chemistry for one.
There are such things as radiolytic compounds. They occur when food is
irradiated to sterilize it. That means the food has been exposed to
nuclear radiation (which is radioactive, in other words atomic particles
which are smaller than an atom, are going in all directions and can
bombard atoms to change them. Examples of radioactive type activity are
X-ray, gamma-ray and the like.) NOT microwaves!
An example of a radiolyutic compound is 2-alkylcyclobutanones (2-ACBs),
a radiolytic derivative of triglycerides found exclusively in irradiated
food.

Microwave food is NOT "irradiated" and has no such items. Irradiated
specifically means atomic radiation with subatomic particles.

Microwaves are not radioactive. The word "radiation" means going in
all directions. It is only atomic or nuclear radiation which is
"radioactive" by bombarding and changing other particles. [Basically
sub-atokic particles bombard atoms and knock out other sub-atomic
particles.]
With microwaves there are no subatomic particles!

Microwave radiation - is radio waves going in all directions (similar
wavelength to those used by your TV) - not nuclear subatomic particle
radiation going in all directions, as is used in "irradiated food".

I can only assume this person has confused microwaved food with
irradiated food.
There's no comparison!

What's radiating matters:-)

Irradiated food is indeed dangerous to health, and so far has proven to
produce cancers in rats.
Microwaved food is NOT irradiated, and is just heated.
Mutations are not the same as radiolytic particles.
However the radioactive (not microwaved but irradiated items) food can
theoretically bombard sex cells (sperm/egg) and knock out subatomic
particles from there to cause a mutation. Unlikely but theoretically
possible - with *irradiated* food. More lkely - as does happen, the
radiation will knock out bits of atoms from cells to induce cancer.

This can not occur with heated food - only irradiated, and the chances
of it happening are very low even if you eat irradiated food all day.
So again he is confusing irradiated and microwaved.
According to?

In fact research shows you need subatomic nuclear radiation to produce
radiolytic compounds - and this is clear simply from the derivation of
the word radiolytic.
It means to use radioactive particles to "split" (lyse) something.
Radiolysis always splits off a subatomic particle by atomic radiation.
In research there is much work on this using gamma rays to cause
radiolytic compounds.
You can't make them with "cooking" nor with "microwave cooking", as
there are no radioactive components in either.
If you believe that you'll believe anything - but it's true that
radiolytic compounds CAN be involved in intermediate steps in the
carrying of Oxygen by Iron in hemoglobin.
So again it has to do with atomic radiation - not microwaves.
He's again assumed "irradiated" food is the same as microwaved:-)

Don't have time for the rest - but the bottom line is that microwaved
food is just food which is heated by something like TV waves.
And that Hertel et all would likely flunk second grade chemistry and
first grade physics.
Shame on them for not checking out the validity and just going with
sensationalism!
It's all VERY old news............
Good idea though it would have been better to just publish the truth
instead. Now that the internet is in better shape, the nonsense shoudl
die - but I see it over and over again..........

So maybe he SHOULD have been gagged permanently!
(Not really - I do believe in freedom of press - but we need to know
that means garbage is there to read!)

NAmaste,
IRene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

Ruby wrote:

....would know better:-)
Or should!
Using what container? BIG issue!
Which water?
How hot?
Heated how long?
Using what container?
which water?
How hot?
how long?
Using what container?
Which water?
How hot?
How long was it boiled?
Using what container.
Boiling? How long?
(Microwave heat can super-heat....)
This is not science, it is old wives tale stuff.
Storing the water how?
And no doubt he planted them all in the same hole with the same light
exposure, temperature etc. ))

and how did his control seeds do?
Oh - what controls?

Some REAL science (unlike this experiment) shows that water changes
according to what we think about it:-))
Did he observe the growth by double-blind method - nobody knowing which
was watered with what?

There's no science here:-)
Sorry - not impressed.

Namaste,
IRene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."