# Microwaving food - can we settle this **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 23, 2013, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483 "2013-04-23T11:16:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/61 "2013-04-24T16:52:37Z")
> [@Laggard](#): > > Yes I know. And the idea of your body wrapping food in fat to protect itself is amazingly stupid. Especially when you consider the question of where it’d get that fat from. Unless there’s some kind of spontaneous generation going on, you wouldn’t get any more fat than normal from the food. So what would be the problem? ---
**Author:** ![eltro102](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@eltro102](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eltro102)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/62 "2013-04-24T18:37:07Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Go ahead, try it. Make up a truly finished “TV dinner” with sauce, meat, pasta, cheese, and vegetables. Package it any way you like. Freeze it for eight weeks. To be really fair, let it partially thaw once or twice. Nuke it without being too fussy about power and time (or turning, fluffing or tending it) and put it on the table as it comes out of the microwave. Does it look like the fresh version you made? Does it look even as good as a Swanson offering? Or does it look like colorless, separated, dried-out institutional food? > > Food engineering is not secret. It’s just not publicized. Anyone who imagines their burritos coming from rows of skilled mamacitas tenderly making each one from fresh taqueria ingredients, or any variation thereof, is welcome to their delusion. If it’s frozen and it’s not a raw vegetable, it’s as engineered as an iPad. This has more to do with using a microwave and freezer incorrectly than “oh no!!! food has chemicals!!! !!! ! !” ---
**Author:** ![Archaic\_Entity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@Archaic\_Entity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Archaic_Entity)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/63 "2013-04-24T18:58:15Z")
> [@dotchan](#): > > I remember my mom getting one of those mass-forward emails claiming that plastic containers, even the ones labeled as “microwave safe”, should never ever be nuked for fear of Vague Horrible Things happening to you. Is there any real credence to that, or should I tell mom not to sweat it? The only reason I don’t like reheating things in those plastic microwave containers is because it’s likely to stain the container over time. My tupperware turns all orange stained. That’s probably where they get their junk science. But it can’t really hurt you, other than make your tupperware look perma-nasty. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/64 "2013-04-24T19:10:24Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > In your first post you said nobody could freeze and reheat a delicious home burrito. Then when everyone said they reheat delicious frozen burritos all the time, you quickly switched to nobody being able to freeze food for weeks or months. But that’s not true either. I don’t know anybody who freezes leftovers for less than weeks or months. Heck, if it’s going to be eaten in less than that, why would you bother freeze it? ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/65 "2013-04-24T19:41:12Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > And flavor enhancers, emulsifiers, dyes and numerous things most people cannot even pronounce let alone comprehend without a degree in [food science](http://foodscience.cornell.edu/cals/foodsci/). Then perhaps “most people” would find it both useful and gratifying to do some reading on the topic rather than run screaming into the hills whenever they hear a spooky word like “emulsifiers.” ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/66 "2013-04-24T20:02:42Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > You can probably use another thickener that can hold up to freezing. I’ve never tried it, but arrowroot apparently survives the freezing process quite well. And I believe xanthan gum would work quite well, too. I haven’t broken down and gotten xanthum gum yet, after 6 years of cooking for a gluten free kid. Go figure. I’m sure that $16 price tag would have amortized quite nicely by now, but I cringe and just can’t put a 1 pound bag of \*anything \*in my cart for $16. 😃 But thanks for the tips; I do have some arrowroot, I’ll give that a try. > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > The discussion got split, and is split off from the OP to boot. My main point is that commercial frozen food hardly uses a single ingredient that would be found on a home cook’s shelf. Most of these ingredients are benign - just flour, dairy products, etc. that have been modified to handle the unusual conditions. Others are pretty nasty stuff - starting with the excess of salt and sugar used for all the commercial food reasons. Well the point the rest of us have been arguing wasn’t that. It was your second point: "[You cannot just make fresh food and freeze it for later nuking.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16224056&postcount=8) " _That’s_ the only thing I disagreed with. I even said, “[I think the “engineering” is more about cost cutting, less about the true limitations of freezing and reheating real food.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16224263&postcount=9)” I acknowledge that there’s a lot of engineering in large scale frozen dinner prep. I don’t think it’s quite as much as you initially stated (“virtually nothing in them is what it appears to be,”) but yes, absolutely there’s food science at work in that box o’ Stouffers. > [@pulykamell](#): > > But when I want cream, I just want plain cream. I think there’s exactly one brand in my usual grocery where cream is just cream and nothing else. I. Cannot. Find. A. Single. Whipped. Cream. That’s. Only. Cream (and sugar). It’s all got vegetable oil in it! All of it! _Even the one with the ad_ about vegetable oil vs. cream!!! It’s driving me fucking mad, because it’s a very new switch that NO ONE seems to notice!!! :mad: (I know, I know, I should be whipping my own cream.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/67 "2013-04-24T20:38:11Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I. Cannot. Find. A. Single. Whipped. Cream. That’s. Only. Cream (and sugar). It’s all got vegetable oil in it! All of it! _Even the one with the ad_ about vegetable oil vs. cream!!! It’s driving me fucking mad, because it’s a very new switch that NO ONE seems to notice!!! :mad: (I know, I know, I should be whipping my own cream.) Oh, I’m not even talking about whipped cream. Do they even have that with just plain cream? I’m talking about whipping cream or table cream, the liquid stuff. That’s hard enough to find without other additions to it. ETA: Oh, and with xanthan gum, a little goes a long way, so while that $16 may sound like a lot, it’ll last you a while. I don’t know if there’s a set conversion, but I’d guess something like four times the thickening power of an equivalent amount of corn starch. Plus you don’t need to cook it. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/68 "2013-04-24T21:02:43Z")
Honestly, most of the time I’m using my microwave these days it’s either for heating water or cooking from scratch - I do both rice and baked potatoes in the thing. Also reheat leftovers, but they’re usually only a day or two old and never frozen. About the only prepared food I nuke is not the frozen stuff but the pasta packages with sauce. No, probably not the best thing, but I use one maybe once a week to once a fortnight so it’s not often enough to be a concern for me. Sure, once in awhile we’ll do frozen dinners but those are usually for Insanely Busy and/or Catastrophe Weeks and are a temporary stop-gap for a crisis. So… it’s not the microwave that’s the problem, it’s what you’re heating up inside it. It’s the food, not the oven. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/69 "2013-04-24T22:39:20Z")
> [@colander](#): > > Then perhaps “most people” would find it both useful and gratifying to do some reading on the topic rather than run screaming into the hills whenever they hear a spooky word like “emulsifiers.” I guess I missed the emulsifier aisle at the grocery store. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/70 "2013-04-24T22:45:18Z")
Mustard is an emulsifier, for example. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/71 "2013-04-24T23:08:59Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > I guess I missed the emulsifier aisle at the grocery store. Do you even know what an emulsion is? ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/72 "2013-04-24T23:10:48Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > Mustard is an emulsifier, for example. So is E471. Why not say mustard? ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/73 "2013-04-24T23:11:11Z")
Eggs and honey are emulsifiers too. It’s why you see it so often in sauces to help mix oils and water based liquids. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/74 "2013-04-24T23:15:27Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > So is E471. Why not say mustard? I don’t understand your point. Emulsifiers can be purified, such as lecithin (phosphatidylcholine), or exist as a compound in whole foods like mustard, egg yolk or honey. Purified or synthesized emulsifiers (soy lecithin for example) might have names such as that. But, still not quite getting your point. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/75 "2013-04-24T23:18:43Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > So is E471. Why not say mustard? If I gave mustard a spooky name with numbers and letters in it, would you become frightened of that as well? I mean, are you wary of these things because you can’t be bothered to look up what they actually are and how they work, or is there some other, less hilarious objection that you have that you’d maybe like to share? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/76 "2013-04-24T23:22:24Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > I guess I missed the emulsifier aisle at the grocery store. If you’re truly interested in fighting your own ignorance, you may enjoy this: [Good Eats S04E10 The Egg Files IV: Mayo Clinic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMx7aeU3cKk) It’s 20 entertaining, easy to watch minutes, but if you’re pressed for time, minutes 2-9 will make your “I learned something new today” quota. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/77 "2013-04-24T23:27:27Z")
Saying emulsifier is no stranger than referring to baking powder as a leavening agent or corn starch as a thickener. It is just a category of foods that serve a particular function in a recipe, beyond flavor. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2013, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/78 "2013-04-25T12:11:08Z")
> [@colander](#): > > If I gave mustard a spooky name with numbers and letters in it, would you become frightened of that as well? > > I mean, are you wary of these things because you can’t be bothered to look up what they actually are and how they work, or is there some other, less hilarious objection that you have that you’d maybe like to share? Yes, I can’t be bothered to look them up in the grocery store. What is so strange about that? It’s not something that people would normally stock in their pantry so they give the impression that they are just hiding something. You ever hear of Red dye #4, sounds harmless enough. Jezz. You also cannot tell if they are hiding certain animal fats in those emulsifiers, such as pork; certain people want to know that kind of thing. anyway, this has nothing to do with the OP. If you want to defend additives in foods you might want to start your own thread. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2013, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/79 "2013-04-25T20:53:11Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I haven’t broken down and gotten xanthum gum yet, after 6 years of cooking for a gluten free kid. Go figure. I’m sure that $16 price tag would have amortized quite nicely by now, but I cringe and just can’t put a 1 pound bag of \*anything \*in my cart for $16. 😃 I felt the same way, but honestly, it’s probably a once-in-your-life purchase. A little goes a LONG way, as we discovered when we bought it and started playing with it. The Other Shoe had some homemade salad dressing and when we added what seemed like a really tiny amount, well … you could just about make a spoon stand up in it! It’s a really powerful thickener, and utterly flavorless so it works in both sweet and savory items. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2013, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483/80 "2013-04-25T21:05:55Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > They’re much more like radar, in fact. And no one’s freaking out about radar. > [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > I’m sure someone is. > [@WhyNot](#): > > Heh. You’re probably right. I’m a little late to the party here, but Slate recently published an article on how [people with “electromagnetic hypersensivity” have been moving to the U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone in West Virginia](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/04/green_bank_w_v_where_the_electrosensitive_can_escape_the_modern_world.single.html) to escape radar (along with radio waves and other forms of EM radiation that they feel are harmful.) So yes, there are people who worry about this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microwaving-food-can-we-settle-this/656483.md?page=5)