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Robin Lynam

FOR PROFESSIONAL  chefs and amateur cooks alike, the microwave oven is something of a dirty little secret. Almost everybody uses one but nobody likes to admit it.

As far as most people are concerned, they are too cheap and convenient to be dispensed with, but there are those who argue that microwaves are a lazy way to cook or take the view that 'nuking' food cannot be good for you.

Raymond Blanc, the double-Michelin-starred chef of Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Oxford, Britain, for example, is not a fan.

'Shove something plastic into the microwave and then shove it in front of the kids who are sitting in front of the TV?' he says. 'That's not an act of love, it's an act of hate.'

Be that as it may, few more than nominally equipped home kitchens today are without a microwave oven, and restaurants - which have to do many things in a hurry - can ill afford to forego the saving in time the equipment offers.

Most of us cannot imagine how anybody ever got along without one. Microwave cooking, after all, has been with us for decades.

The means by which the ovens work was discovered in 1945. An American technician and keen inventor named Percy Spencer was working for the Raytheon company manufacturing radar equipment. Radar depends on components called magnetrons to produce microwave radio signals.

One day while he was standing in front of a magnetron, a chocolate bar in his pocket suddenly melted. He realised that the signals were generating heat in a previously unknown way.

His natural curiosity aroused, Spencer gave some popcorn the magnetron treatment and found that it popped satisfactorily.

An attempt to boil an egg ended less happily when it exploded in his face, but the point was proven. He patented the process and quickly developed a new type of oven using the magnetron technology.

Raytheon launched the Radarange in 1947. It aroused plenty of interest, but was almost two metres tall, used around three times the power of modern models, and cost thousands of dollars.

It took several decades for the microwave oven to make the leap from the professional kitchen to the home. Smaller units were produced in the 1950s, but they remained costly and cumbersome, and did not catch on.

Finally in 1967 a countertop Radarange priced at U$495 broke down America's resistance. Today about 95 per cent of households in the United States are believed to own a microwave oven.

Nevertheless it is Japanese companies that dominate international markets, including Hong Kong's. The world's largest microwave producer is Sharp, which began selling professional ovens to Japanese hotels and restaurants in 1962 and has racked up a number of firsts in the field since.

In 1966 the company became the first to manufacture a microwave oven with a turntable for home use. The turntable helps the food to cook more evenly and was already a feature of professional units.

In 1979 it introduced the first model of the type of microwave oven most commonly used today - one which also incorporates convection cooking and microcomputer controlled settings.

Many households where space saving is a requirement - as it is for most in Hong Kong - no longer have conventional ovens. A microwave and toaster oven, either combined or as two separate units, is all many people believe they need.

So what are the cases for and against?

Critics allege that microwave cooking leeches the vitamins from food, and dioxin leeched from supposedly microwave-safe plastic food containers and transferred to the food, creating a carcinogenic risk.

This was denied recently by SC Johnson, which makes Saran and Ziploc containers, at least as far as its own products are concerned. The company stated its containers are 100 per cent dioxin-free.

Other critics assert that microwaving food to reheat it is an unreliable way to kill bacteria, and some believe  the process of microwaving produces molecular changes in the food that also might increase the risk of cancer.

A number of scientific studies support some of these opinions, although in many cases their findings and methodologies have been called into question.

Different chefs have different views on the matter. One who regards microwave energy with distrust is Cafe Deco's Martin Kniss.

'Cooking with a microwave is not good for the food at all. It kills all the nutrition in it,' Mr Kniss said. 'In one study a batch of mice received food cooked in the microwave every day, and the other batch received the same food cooked the normal way. All the mice who ate the food from the microwave died significantly earlier, because all the health benefits were destroyed.'

Advocates of the microwave, however, point out that they reheat without altering taste, and are useful for thawing frozen food and melting fats.

Alvin Leung of Bo Innovation said: 'Sometimes it's a very good way of reheating because it's quick and you can control the temperature quite accurately. Microwaving is something I use for very delicate food because you can control the amount of heat that goes in. It's very precise.'



Quick but controversial