Urban Myth: Microwaving your Food Kills all the Nutrients

Oh, dear... Just leave it to the Internet to spread more urban myths than ancient folklore! I've been hearing more and more about this lately, but actually this urban myth has been around for quite some time.

Anyway, using your microwave oven as recommended, does not kill or remove any more nutrients than standard stove-top cooking. In fact, boiling your food is the worst when it comes to nutrients leeching out. On the other hand, cooking your food by whatever means, actually increases your nutritional absorption rates for certain foods. Take tomatoes, for example. You absorb a higher rate of lycopene from cooked and processed tomato products than you would if you consumed them raw. Other foods such as mushrooms, carrots, spinach, asparagus, cabbage, broccoli, peppers, and so on, are actually better (for certain nutrients) when cooked because the antioxidants are easier to absorb, for yet another example.

When it comes to vitamins, remember that many of these are water-soluble and if you want to zap-out more water-soluble nutrients, just boil them for a while in water or pickle them in a brine solution. Instead of me rambling about this microwaving subject half the morning, I'll provide a few resource links below, just in case you don't believe me. However, feel free to find some "conspiracy" websites written by high-school drop-outs (or whoever) that may tell you that the microwave is your worst enemy. Boo-boo! Ha-ha!

One more quick tidbit before I supply some resources: Since various types of cooking and microwaving can destroy a percentage of certain nutrients that you may or may not have absorbed anyway, wouldn't a quicker cook in the microwave be better than super-steaming and/or boiling on the stove? Yeah, many folks don't understand the molecular movement involved with a microwave, so I can understand how some of these urban myths got started on the Internet/World Wide Web/the Net/InterWeb. LOL!

If in doubt, read more about the subject:
* www.shape.com/healthy-eating/diet-tips/ask-diet-doctor-does-microwaving-vegetables-really-kill-nutrients
* www.livestrong.com/article/368262-do-microwave-ovens-destroy-food-nutrients/

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