Status: Undetermined
I've
posted before about theories that microwaved food is bad for you, but this is slightly different. Some guy has posted pictures of his
granddaughter's science fair project in which she tested the effect microwaved water would have on a plant. The result: the plant died. (Yes, the water had been cooled before she watered the plant with it.) But the plant given water that had been boiled on a stove did just fine. So what does this prove? That microwaved water is toxic? Not necessarily. The guy notes:
We have seen a number of comments on this, such as what was the water in the microwave boiled in. The thinking is that maybe some leaching took place if it was in plastic. It was boiled in a plastic cup, so this could be a possibility. Also it was not a double blind experiment, so she knew which was which when watering them. On top of that she was wanting the microwaved ones to do poorly, and although most scientists would dismiss the idea, it is possible that her thoughts toward each plant had an effect as well. Bottom line is, the results are interesting, and duplicate the results that others have reported (try Googling '"microwaved water" plants') more experiments need to be done with better controls and as a double blind study. But this was a simple 6th grade science fair project, and was never intended to be anything more than that. The plants were genetically identical, they were produced from graphs from the same parent plant, so that variable can be eliminated.
Intriguingly, the Straight Dope (a source I usually trust) has written an article about
the controversy over microwave cooking, and he notes that scientists actually do not fully understand the chemical changes that take place when food is microwaved, and so there may indeed be some kind of "microwave effect." He notes a 1992 Stanford study that found microwaving breast milk mysteriously reduces its infection-fighting properties, as well as studies that have found that microwaves can accelerate certain chemical reactions. He writes:
"'One suggestion,' a bunch of chemists wrote recently, 'is that this is some form of 'ponderomotive' driving force that arises when high frequency electric fields modulate ionic currents near interfaces with abrupt differences in ion mobility.'" He doesn't attempt to explain this theory.
I would repeat the girl's experiment myself, but everything I try to grow mysteriously dies, so there wouldn't be much point. (via
The Greener Side)
Comments
The key point is the experiment above is a fraud. Follow this link for why I say this:
http://www.eclecticscience.net/experiments/001-microwave-plants/original_experiment/index.html
You can't tell the truth through a lie. Just because Dr. Mercola is popular doesn't mean he is correct. Here's another view of him:
http://gyxe.com/breast-implant/5-073-dr-mercola-is-a-fraud-read.shtml
or simply Goggle his name along with the word quack and you get a lot of interesting reading. If you fear microwaved food, by all means avoid it. But don't defend obviously fraudulent web evidence. Stick to the science journals and trusted sources.
peace
i love my sis brit..and my lil nephews...foget k fed
here is the text of my abstract
We did an experiment on microwaving water. We wanted to see whether the rumor was true that microwaving water killed plants. We had looked online and supposedly some girl had done an experiment where she microwaved water and fed it to one plant and then fed another plant tap water. She said the one that got microwaved water died. We checked many other places and we also found that a Swedish scientist named Dr. Hans Hertell had conducted a similar experiment. He and some of his colleagues had eaten nothing but microwaved food for a week. After the experiment, they had increased cholesterol and decrease hemoglobin levels and they also had a lower white blood cell percentage. When we tried to find more experiments with plants we could not find anything but the one source. So we decided to do an experiment with more complicated variables to see if it really was the microwaved water that killed the plant.
For our experiment we fed 8 different solutions to 32 different pole bean plants. Our solutions were microwaved, boiled, distilled, and tap water all either with or without fertilizer. Each day we fed the plants a set amount of their solutions usually from 3 to 5 tablespoons on each solution. Then we measured the plants. We only put in fertilizer once a week. We user skewers to hold the plants up and we tried to measure them several times.
Our experiment is done and we have found that the microwaved water has not killed the plants. The microwaved plants were actually doing quite fine and some are taller than the boiled and distilled too.
Yes, it's a tiny sample set. Yes, lots of things could account for the differences. I don't claim anything other than "here's another datapoint".
The water used for both plants came from the bottled water we have delivered to our house. We boiled one batch on the stove in a pot and the other in a pyrex container in the microwave. The water boiled for 10 minutes in each case. It was then stored in plastic Dasani water containers which had been washed out with soap, rinsed thoroughly, and allowed to dry. After that, we simply watered the plants every day making a small effort to put the same amount of water into each pot.
Here's the link to the images:
http://www.flickr.com/gp/11367898@N06/tE769B
http://microwavetest.blogspot.com/
For the person claiming "Microwaved food has been PROVEN to be different and harful [sic] to human consumption...," please list the studies. I know of no reputable study that confirms this statement. I'm not saying it isn't possible, I saying show me the evidence.
I didn't boil the water (why would you??) just heated it. I also heated 'control' water on a stove to the same temp (75C) cooled it then germinated and grew wheatgrass. Each day with freshly microwaved and heated water.
One batch with untreated water.
One batch with water that was re-microwaved daily to make sure I "killed" it!
The result: growth rate, size, appearance and taste....all the same!
There can certainly be undesirable elements in glass, especially if cheaply made (For instance in China).
It could be that you have discovered that even glass can leach materials.
Very interesting.
Check out the wiki on glass:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Glass_ingredients
I found this article but don't understand.
Abstract
The effect of heat and microwave denaturation of small volumes of double-stranded plasmid DNA has been compared. Samples of intact plasmid DNA and plasmid DNA linearized by digestion with EcoRI were conventionally denatured in a boiling water bath or denatured by 2450 MHz of microwave energy for 0
Could it be that there isn't a corporate sponsor paying for such research?
Me thinks our universities only research what big business wants them to. Then again, why wouldn't GE or another microwave oven manufacturer simply put the issue to rest themselves...it's not like this is an expensive study.
From what I've read, immature plants watered with micro-waved water tend to die.
I wouldn't trust that Dr.Mercola guy much. All his "health claim publications" are letters in response to someone elses publication and therefore not peer reviewed and at best are his own intepretations of someone elses work. Still fair play to him, he's abusing the ignorance of many and probably getting rich from it, while ironically talking about "bad science" and "bias".
Heat is kinetic energy; temperature is simply the average kinetic energy of a system and its surroundings. In liquid water, molecules are constantly moving about their occupied space. The more kinetic energy that exists in the system, the faster the molecules move and the more freely their energies are distributed (entropy).
In addition to moving about within their occupied space, the molecules themselves experience movement in the forms of rotation, vibration, and translation. Unfortunately, I have no way of illustrating these movements via text, so I highly encourage you, the reader, to conduct some research into the matter.
Anyways, microwaves emit infrared waves, which are not very energetic; however, these waves happen to coincide perfectly with the rotation of water molecules, thus the substance is capable of absorbing huge amounts of energy via microwaves.
Moreover, the energy that is applies to water does nothing to change its chemical properties. When energy is no longer applied to the system, the water will return to thermoequilibrium. In essence, the water never changed; it just possessed more kinetic energy.
While certain forms of radiation will denature complex molecules such as DNA, it does not chemically affect water in any way.
Aside from taking courses in chemistry and botany, the best I can recommend people do is perform the experiment themselves. Doing so will only take a few weeks, provided one follows reasonable procedures.
because of the way they work literally blow apart bacteria within fractions of a second killing them instantaneously this means you are more than very un lightly to get any sort of food poisoning from something cooked in a microwave oven than conventionally. I have been using them for over 30 years & found this to be the case so far...
I am also an electronics design Eng so fully understand their workings( also having repaired industrial ones ). microwave ovens have safety devices built in which prevent any exposure to microwaves. out of the millions sold how many documented law suits have you read about where manufactures paid out compensation? I have never seen any ever!
Also the plant itself could have been unhealthy or the soils could have been different with one plant getting more nutrients than the other.
1. Plant handler
2. Intermediary
3. Water handler
4. Independent Trustee
The plant handler plants an even number of plants in a tray. Trays might favor some regions (light, heat, etc.) so the distribution of A and B seeds within the tray should be set up as a checker board. Markings must be minimal (if the A's are in white containers and the B's are in black ones, the experiment is bad in several ways). Identical labels, toothpicks, placement and depth, pen ink, etc. must be used.
Procedure:
1. Intermediary makes all the "A" and "B" labels that both the water and plant handlers will need.
2. Working alone, seeds are planted. The plant handler tries for uniformity but is assumed to fail ("he got better, or more bored, as he went along", etc).
3. Working alone, the intermediary uses dice to randomly transfer containers into a the final tray. Last, he then flips a coin to label the plants with a checker board patter with "A" vs. "B" in the top left corner.
4. Working alone, the water handler flips a coin for "A" vs. "B" to be the microwaved sample. He writes this down in two copies with trustee present. One for his wallet to use, one for the trustee.
5. Each day, working alone, the water handler boils the "A" and "B" water as per the initial coin toss. This is done in identical pyrex glassware for both the microwave and burner methods, at power levels such that both samples boil in/for about the same period of time. He places the "A" and "B" samples in the cooling area or fridge.
6. Later in each day, working alone, the plant handler waters the appropriate plants with the cooled "A" and "B" samples, checking for identical temperature.
7. Working alone, when the experimental period is over, the intermediary (who has no idea which type of water is "A" or "B") measures/photographs/etc. the plants. He must NOT allow the water handler to find out about these results, or the plant handler to do the measuring.
8. Finally, the trustee, with everyone present, produces the sealed envelope, and any differences in the A and B groups can now be attributed to the type of boiling method actually used.
Personally, I doubt under these conditions that microwaved water will be any different. But, hey, it doesn't matter what I think: this method will PROVE it.
As a scientist you can never say stuff like "Technically speaking there isn't anything in water that can make it toxic." That's wrong for known reasons, for instance the H2O could be made with Tritium (a radioisotope of hydrogen). A glass of that type of H2O would kill really, really quickly and certainly. Or something else weird could be going on, that's the thing. That's where we, as scientists, must never say never. Instead we go "hmm, what the heck, maybe" and DO THE UNBIASED EXPERIMENTS.
As for the breast milk argument, they have found that breast milk transfers bateria necessary to help digest foods and build an immune system to the child. When you microwave something, any bacteria or other organism will die because the hydrogen in its "body" (cell wall) will vibrate and heat up, effectively killing it. You are essentially disinfecting the breast milk by killing the good bacteria that newborns need introduced into their intestinal track.
My question about the experiment is if she let the water cool down before watering the plants. Hot or warmed water can damage roots and lead to the death of a plant, which would pretty much leave this experiment unreliable. There isn't enough information about the scientific process, and unless it is reproduced in a sealed environment with a proper report we won't know the true answer.
Because if I think back to my middle school projects, I would have done anything to prove my hypothesis. Kids can't really grasp the idea that proving your hypothesis right isn't the goal, and doesn't guarantee a good mark on the project.