By Stephanie Relfe B.Sc. (Syd.)

Microwave cooking is one of the most important causes of ill health. It is certainly one of the most ignored. 

There was a lawsuit in 1991 in Oklahoma. A woman named Norma Levitt had hip surgery, but was killed by a simple blood transfusion when a nurse "warmed the blood for the transfusion in a microwave oven!" 

Logic suggests that if heating is all there is to microwave cooking, then it doesn't matter how something is heated. Blood for transfusions is routinely warmed, but not in microwave ovens. Does it not therefore follow that microwaving cooking does something quite different?

Normal heating of food occurs when heat goes from the outside to the inside. Microwaves work just the opposite. The waves go to the inside and then move outward. The food molecules are hit by the electromagnetic radiation and forced to reverse polarity very quickly. That is, the molecules start spinning. This tears them apart and sometimes rearranges them into toxic substances that cause many allergic responses.

It is this friction which produces the heat which `cooks' the food. Unfortunately, this violent force also rips apart and deforms the molecular structure of the food. It is no longer `food' - it just looks as though it is.

Two researchers, Blanc and Hertel, confirmed that microwave cooking significantly changes food nutrients. Hertel previously worked as a food scientist for several years with one of the major Swiss food companies. He was fired from his job for questioning procedures in processing food because they denatured it. He got together with Blanc of the Swiss Federal Institute of Biochemistry and the University Institute for Biochemistry.

They studied the effect that microwaved food had on eight individuals, by taking blood samples immediately after eating. They found that after eating microwaved food, haemoglobin levels decreased. "These results show anaemic tendencies. The situation became even more pronounced during the second month of the study".

Who knows what results they would have found if they had studied people who ate microwaved food for a year or more?

The violent changes to the food molecules also form new life forms called radiolytic compounds. These are mutations that are unknown in the natural world. Ordinary cooking also causes the formation of some radiolytic compounds (which is no doubt one reason why it is better to eat plenty of raw food), but microwaving cooking causes a much greater number. This then causes deterioration in your blood and immune system.

In addition, they found that the number of leucocytes increases after eating microwaved food - something which haematologists take very seriously, because this is often a sign of highly harmful effects, such as poisoning.

Also, after eating microwaved food, cholesterol levels increased. Hertel said "Common scientific belief states that cholesterol values usually alter slowly over longer periods of time. In this study, the markers increased rapidly after the consumption of the microwaved vegetables." He believes his study tends to confirm new scientific data that suggest cholesterol may rapidly increase in the blood secondary to acute stress. "Also," he added, "blood cholesterol levels are less influenced by cholesterol content of food than by stress factors. Such stress-causing factors can apparently consist of foods which contain virtually no cholesterol - the microwaved vegetables."

The results were published in "Search for Health" in the Spring of 1992. How was this research greeted? A powerful trade organisation, the Swiss Association of Dealers for Electroapparatuses for Households and Industry somehow made the President of the Court of Seftigen issue a `gag order'. Hertel and Blanc were told that if they published their findings they would face hefty fines or up to one year in prison. In response to this, Blanc recanted his findings. Hertel, on the other hand, went on a lecture tour and demanded a jury trial.

FINALLY, in 1998 the Court `Gag Order' was removed.  In a judgment delivered at Strasbourg on 25 August 1998 in the case of Hertel v. Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights held that there had been a violation of Hertel's rights in the 1993 decision.  The Court decided that the `gag order' prohibiting him form declaring that microwaved food is dangerous to health was contrary to the right to freedom of expression.  In addition, Switzerland was sentenced to pay compensation of F40,000.

Standing in front of a microwave is also highly damaging to your health. Perhaps you have already felt this intuitively? We know that cells explode in the microwave - just fry an egg in your microwave. We are made up of trillions of cells. So work out how many are getting damaged if you stand in front of your microwave for 5-10 minutes.

In the past I had been told that it was important for people to stop eating microwaved food, but I did not pay too much attention to this because I had been microwave cooking for years. I never thought much about it but I suppose that I figured that if something was so bad for us, then there wouldn't be so many people using it. Little did I know.

When I first began seeing clients for sessions of kinesiology, I did not worry too much about telling them to give up eating microwaved food. However, I kept a record of all of the corrections that were needed for each client when they came in. Now, once a correction is made, it is to be hoped that the correction will stay in place for a long time to come, hopefully months if not years. People often ask me "How long will it last?" May answer to them is "That depends on your lifestyle".

Most of my clients came back to see me after about two weeks. In the early days I found that many who came back were not much better. I found that they were again `out of balance'. That is, their electrical circuits were not working correctly (which is common for many people). It was therefore not surprising that they were not much better, because the body does not begin to fully fix itself until the electrical circuits are in balance.

The question was, why did their electrical circuits go out of balance? The answer had to be something that was highly stressful, to effect the body in such a short space of time. Once that answer was remedied, the client would begin to get better. Using muscle testing, I went through the process of testing if the cause was electrical, chemical/nutritional, emotional or structural. Again and again the same answer would come up - electrical. When I then went through a range of possible electrical causes, the same answer again came up again and again - the person had eaten microwaved food! Incidentally, this answer never came up when a person had NOT eaten microwaved food.

I began to tell all of my clients on the first visit that under NO circumstances were they ever to do microwaved cooking again. I gave this a higher priority than any of things that are normally considered as health risks, such as cigarettes or alcohol. Immediately I began to get a marked improvement in the results I was getting. Long term problems such as headaches, back aches and emotional instability went away within a few weeks.

Other kinesiologists can confirm these results. David Bridgman, who has years of experience as a kinesiologist, said "Of all the people I test for allergies, 99.9% so far show severe sensitivity to any microwaved food".

I experienced the effect of eating microwaved food for myself one time. I had been doing quite a lot of kinesiology and feeling on top of the world when for no apparent reason I began to feel rather `grey' and rather low. I realised that I needed a balance from a kinesiologist. Sure enough, I was out of balance. When the kinesiologist used muscle testing to see why my body had gone out of balance, the answer came up ... microwaved food! The trouble was, I couldn't remember eating any. Until I remembered a particular vegetarian restaurant I had been to. When I went back to the restaurant and asked them if they microwaved their food, they told me that they did.

So be warned! Many restaurants use microwaved cooking, even `health' restaurants. Ask if the "steamed vegetables" are in fact steamed - or are they microwaved? I have sent meals back when they have not been what they were described on the menu, much to the surprise of the restaurant owners.

One last story: The Cornell University in 1977 irradiated some sugar and fed it to rats. The type of cell damage shown on post mortem was the same as if the rats themselves had been irradiated!

So, it's up to you. One point to bear in mind is that our society runs pretty much on money. The multinational companies who make microwave ovens make a lot from the sale of them. There is no money in telling people to stop microwave cooking.  There is, however, the satisfaction of knowing that you are saving people's lives and future happiness by spreading the word to stop eating microwaved food.

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