Any form of cooking will destroy some nutrients in food, but the key variables are how much water is used in the cooking, how long the food is cooked, and at what temperature.Microwave ovens do convert vitamin B12 from the active to inactive form, making approximately 30-40% of the B12 contained in foods unusable by mammals.Spinach retains nearly all its folate when cooked in a microwave; in comparison, it loses about 77 percent when cooked on a stove, because food on a stove is typically boiled, leaching out nutrients. Steamed vegetables tend to maintain more nutrients when cooked on a stovetop than in a microwave. Bacon cooked by microwave has significantly lower levels of carcinogenic nitrosamines than conventionally cooked bacon
What effects on food and nutrients while use microwave?
What are the benefits of a microwave oven?
Microwave ovens are generally used for time efficiency at most of all commercial applications, such as restaurants, in the office and at home. Although some of modern recipes has used microwave, but some of the traditional recipes are still using oven and stoves. Professional chefs generally find microwave ovens to be of limited usefulness because of browning,caramelization, and other flavour-enhancing reactions cannot occur due to the temperature range. On the other hand, people who want fast cooking times can use microwave ovens to prepare food or to reheat stored food (including commercially available pre-cooked frozen dishes) in only a few minutes. Microwave Ovens can also be used to defrost items that will later be cooked by traditional methods, cutting the time it takes to defrost foods naturally. Microwave ovens are also useful for the ease in which they can perform some traditionally cumbersome kitchen tasks, such as softening butter or melting chocolate. Popcorn is an item popular with microwave oven users.
What are the components of a microwave oven?
- High voltage power source, commonly a simple transformer or an electronic power converter, which passes energy to the magnetron
- Stirrer, which converts high-voltage electric energy to microwave radiation
- Magnetron control circuit (usually with a microcontroller)
- Waveguide (to control the direction of the microwaves)
- Turntable
- Cooking cavity
how does it work?
A microwave oven works by passing non-ionizing microwave radiation, usually at a frequency of 2.45 gigahertz (GHz)—a wavelength of 122 millimetres (4.80 in)—through the food. Microwave radiation is between common radio and infrared frequencies. Water, fat, and other substances in the food absorb energy from the microwaves in a process called dielectric heating.
Many molecules (such as those of water) are electric dipoles, meaning that they have a positive charge at one end and a negative charge at the other, and therefore rotate as they try to align themselves with the alternating electric field of the microwaves. This molecular movement represents heat which is then dispersed as the rotating molecules hit other molecules and put them into motion.
.jpg)
