Why microwaves do not kill harmful bacteria as well as boiling?

Why microwaves do not kill harmful bacteria as well as boiling? - Orange and Gray Tunnel Painting

Medical Biochemistry point of view

My biochemistry teacher said today that the problem with micros is that they do not kill all harmful bacteria. He proposed boiling food instead.

I think there are two reasons. Water can emit heat to bacteria from many more different directions than microwaves can. The heat frequency is changing all the time to the bacteria, since water is moving. Radio waves can be applied only from discrete directions. To make microwaves better, I think reflection and different materials on the walls should be considered

I am not sure which one is the stronger reason why micros cannot make good food:

  • sequentially different waves - probably not
  • or heating bacteria from different angles by mirror/reflection - I think this is the main reason why boiling and oven is better

There at least two types of micros - wide ones and more vertical ones. I have had an intuition that the vertical ones can be more effective. They can send signals more broadly from the bottom, while the wide micros can send them only from one direction - left or right. Also, the reflection technique is easier to apply to those vertical micros, since the roof can be circular, while in the other boxes it is not possible.

Medical Microbiology point of view

Murray's book, Medical Biochemistry, says for different diseases, like Listeria's epidemiology that "Disease can occur if the food is uncooked or inadequately cooked (e.g. microwaved beef and turkey franks) before consumption.

This suggests me that there is some point of view why microwaved food is called "soft-food". I will add pieces of evidence here when I explore more.



Best Answer

I'll go ahead and take a stab at answering this, even though the question is a bit vague. I assume by "cook" you mean "cook with a non-microwave method", like boiling, steaming, baking, frying, sauteeing, or anything else.

First of all, no, I can't think of any reason why microwaves would be worse than any other cooking method. If you fully cook something in a microwave, it is as safe as fully cooking it any other way. If the food reaches the same temperatures, and is held there for the same amount of time, the bacteria will be just as dead no matter what the heat source is. The heat supplied by a microwave is fairly similar to that supplied by steaming, and no one claims that steaming is an unsafe cooking method. The only thing I can think that would be unsafe is if you don't actually fully cook the food, but just heat it to the temperature that you want to eat it at. But that'd be a problem for any cooking method; dangerous undercooked meat is dangerous because of the temperature, not the cooking method. (And of course, not all food needs to be cooked to be safe.)

The arguments you suggest don't really make much sense to me, either. For the first, I don't have any idea what you mean by heat frequency or sequentially different waves; heat is not a wave, so I'm not sure how to respond. No matter how you're cooking something, heat is being transferred into the food. Heat caused by absorption of microwaves is no different from heat supplied by contact with boiling water, steam, pan, or the hot air in an oven. It's still heat transfer, and it makes the temperature go up. Different methods may heat more or less evenly, or at different speeds, but heat is heat.

As for your second suggestion, reflection of microwaves, well, that happens already. You may have noticed that the food in a microwave ends up hot on all sides; this is especially noticeable if it's a big solid piece of food like a casserole. It'll be hot on the top, the bottom, and the sides. The microwaves are reflected around; there's really no other way for it to be. If they weren't reflected they'd have to either be absorbed (meaning your microwave would heat itself up) or pass through the walls (meaning standing next to a microwave would be dangerous). And it'd be horribly inefficient, on top of that.

Of course, all the stuff about reflection and heating from all sides is still a moot point in terms of food safety. When you cook something in a pan on the stove, as long as you fully cook it, it's fine, even though it's only being heated from the bottom. All that matters is the temperature the food reaches.




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Does microwaving food kill harmful bacteria?

According to a study from Michigan State University, microwaves, even those with a turntable inside, can cook unevenly and leave cold spots where harmful bacteria can survive. It is important to remember that microwaves don't kill bacteria unless the food is heated long enough.

Does boiling water in the microwave kill bacteria?

If you're boiling water to purify it, heat it in the microwave long enough to kill the microorganisms. The Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency recommend boiling the water for at least one minute, or 3 minutes at altitudes above 6,562 feet (>2000 m).

Do microwaves kill bacteria and viruses?

Microwave ovens produce radio-frequency waves that cause the water molecules in an object to vibrate. This vibration causes friction, which allows the object to heat up to a temperature that can kill germs.

Can microwaves kill bacteria directly or through the generated heat?

Heat is generated by moving the water molecules in the microwave. The water in the cell is likewise expressed. Since the water inside the bacterial cell will be heated, the bacteria will die with the effect of this heat. Microwaves kill bacteria through generating heat.



Do Microwave Ovens Kill All the Bacteria in Food?




More answers regarding why microwaves do not kill harmful bacteria as well as boiling?

Answer 2

Microwave ovens do not cook food very evenly. This is improved by the turntable, but unless the food is stir-able and you stir it, the food will have hot and cold spots. Most people seem to overcook food and then let it rest for the heat to even out

Most other cooking methods are slower than microwave cooking, so this give time for heat to conduct through the food and give a generally even heat that given time will render most surface bacteria safe (not that you should rely on this). With microwave ovens, the high speed of cooking, the uneven heating, and also insufficient time for heat to conduct through the food without seriously over cooking your food, means you cannot rely on this

You should not cook food that requires heat to kill bacteria, it is always a non-perfect process, regardless of the equipment you use so it is risky, microwave oven or not

Answer 3

There's an interesting article on The Straight Dope that tests the question of how well a microwave kills bacteria on pizza. Here's a few quotes:

If I take a piece of pizza that's been sitting on the table awhile and microwave it, would that kill the bacteria, or am I just eating nice hot bacteria?

Will a microwave kill microbes? Sure. Microwave ovens use electromagnetic radiation to heat water molecules in food. It's the heat, not the microwaves, that's lethal here; the hotter you make your food, the more likely you are to kill the bacteria in it. (Some contend microwave energy itself is fatal to bacteria, but that's unproven.) The key is making the food hot enough uniformly enough for long enough. If it heats unevenly, a common problem in microwaves, some bacteria may survive.

After running some real-world tests and examining their petri dishes, they concluded:

  1. Heating the pizza for 30 seconds was relatively ineffectual.

  2. Heating it for a full minute killed most of the bacteria but not all.

  3. We didn't go in for another round of testing, but suspect that at least two minutes of microwaving would be needed to ensure 100 percent bacteria eradication, at the possible cost of rendering the pizza inedible.

Checkout the full (quite entertaining) article here:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2947/do-microwave-ovens-kill-bacteria

Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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