I have used a microwave oven since I was a teenager in the 80s. Everyone had one where I grew up in Australia, so it seemed natural to have one in my kitchen as an adult I even perfected a microwave porridge recipe that I shared with my Personal Training clients.

Late last year I received an email from a newsletter subscriber who was frankly horrified that I recommend folk ‘nuke’ their porridge in the morning. She sent me the following link , which I visited and thought about. As you can ascertain from the URL, it’s on a ‘natural healing’ website that peddles various elixirs of good health.

Are the microwave oven warnings overcooked? ...

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I Facebooked it to see what my valued friends thought of it, and got feedback varying from believing microwaves were possibly hazardous, to folk who didn’t have one due to lack of room in their wee Edinburgh kitchens, to a few folk who told me not to worry about the hippy hysteria. They said that I might as well wear a tin foil hat as try to avoid microwaved food and electromagnetic radiation.

I was previously using my microwave oven daily for everything from cooking porridge, heating up milk for home made artisan coffee, to steaming vegetables. I knew whenever I used the microwave oven it interfered with the wi-fi, which was weird. If the microwave oven is supposed to be completely sealed, why does it interfere with the wi-fi?

On that subject, wi-fi is also a form of radiation. Should I be worried that I can access five other neighbouring wi-fi networks? I used to turn our wi-fi off at night, but now it seems a bit pointless, as my neighbour is continually wi-fi-ing my personal space. Outside our bedroom window is a green Virgin switchboard box that buzzes like an angry bee day and night. Sometimes it wakes me up – is it frying my head? If positioned too close, my blackberry phone interferes with speakers, causing music to crackle in a most disconcerting manner. It’s enough to make me throw my hands up in the air, don a tin foil hat and run around screaming “The radiation! The radiation! I can’t escape it!” But that would be weird. Perhaps instead I should wallpaper the flat with tin foil.

The old nuke machine
I once interviewed a very enthusiastic young man who opened up Red Sugar Café in Stockbridge. All of his products were raw (raw chocolate cake with xylitol was strangely palatable) and he believed in keeping things as ‘natural’ as possible. He borrowed a Geiger counter to test if his shop was ‘safe’. It turns out his shop was next to a Ladbrokes and all the gaming machines were emitting a rather high level of electromagnetic radiation through his wall. So he used a special kind of paint to line the shop. And after a while his shop shut down. I’m not sure what the moral of that story is.

So, how much radiation is OK? And what kind? I’ve heard that the universe itself emits radiation from outer space. But surely our multitude of high tech gadgets increases the level of radiation that’s pinging about? Is this why it’s such a relief to escape to the country, away from the incessant hum and static?

You’ve probably heard the 80s urban myth (or maybe it’s true), about the clueless dog owner who put her freshly washed chihuahua in the microwave to dry. It exploded. I can remember pondering this at the time and thinking if I were going to be a hot dog, I’d rather be microwaved than shoved in a hot oven and slowly burnt to a crisp. But that doesn’t mean microwaves are good. Just quicker. For dogs.

In the end I decided that my trusty microwave was possibly something I could live without. So I did an experiment, I moved it into my office to see if I’d miss it. At the time I also invested in a good milk pan from Lakeland. I discovered that porridge made on the hob was just as easy as in the microwave, and that I made less fancy coffee. I don’t miss the old nuke-machine and I now have more room in my kitchen.

After a couple of weeks of pondering this, a psychiatrist friend suggested I get a life and consult www.skeptoid.com, where I found the whole microwave conspiracy well and truly debunked. It was too late, for I’d already moved my microwave. And at a friend’s party, we discovered that tin foil is indeed a fabulous medium for making hats. I think the photos may even be kicking around Facebook somewhere.

Microwave ovens are a bit like Marmite – they polarise people, maybe literally… By the way, do you know anyone who would like to buy a second hand microwave oven?

Illustration: Ian Kinghorn