Particularly in light of the many common misconceptions regarding microwave ovens, you may be wondering whether microwaving your food will affect the vitamin and mineral content. The simple answer to this question is that it will. However, any method of cooking food affects the vitamin content. Microwaves actually appear to do so to a lesser extent than conventional cooking methods.
Vitamins and Minerals
Vitamins and minerals fall jointly into the category of micronutrients -- components of food that you require in small amounts, and they provide no energy. Vitamins are organic molecules. They're relatively large and carbon-based, and participate in a number of chemical reactions in the body, explain Drs. Reginald Garrett and Charles Grisham in their book "Biochemistry." Minerals, on the other hand, are small positively or negatively charged particles. You use them to form structural materials and as components of larger molecules.
Microwaves
Microwave ovens provide a rapid and convenient way of cooking food, but there are many misconceptions regarding their function. In reality, microwaves don't depend upon nuclear radiation, and they don't destroy the nutrient molecules in food to any significant degree. They work by causing molecules in your food to spin rapidly, generating heat through friction. This heat spreads through your food, either warming or cooking it. In many ways, microwaving is analogous to stove-top cooking, though the mechanism is slightly different.
Minerals in Food
The vitamins and minerals are all considered essential, meaning that you must eat them in your food in order to maintain health. As such, it's quite reasonable to wonder whether your chosen method of food preparation is negatively impacting the vitamin or mineral content of your food. Minerals don't contain chemical bonds, meaning that there's no way to destroy them through heating a food item. Regardless of whether you choose to microwave or use a stove, you won't affect the mineral content of your food.
Vitamins in Food
Vitamins, unlike minerals, are complex molecules that contain many chemical bonds that can be broken through exposure to heat. This destroys the vitamins. Because vitamins are heat-sensitive, you risk losing nutritional content of any cooked food relative to the raw ingredients. However, microwave ovens actually result in less destruction than regular ovens or stoves. A 2004 study in the journal "Food Chemistry" by Dr. D. Zhang and colleagues shows that broccoli cooked conventionally and by microwave lost about 66 percent of its vitamin C over 300 seconds of cooking time. However, because 300 seconds represents a greater degree of cooking completion in a microwave, as compared to a conventional oven, significantly more time would be required to complete cooking in the conventional oven, resulting in more vitamin loss.
References
- “Biochemistry”; Reginald Garrett, Ph.D. and Charles Grisham, Ph.D.; 2007
- "Food Chemistry"; Phenolics, ascorbic acid, carotenoids and antioxidant activity of broccoli and their changes during conventional and microwave cooking; D. Zhang et al; December 2004
Member Comments