Very interesting.
But accepting that many foods do need to be cooked before consumption of them is safe, the question arises, "Just what is cooking?"
Seriously. Is it boiling in water? Frying on a skillet? Use of an oven? Or, to be effective, maybe it should vary with the type of food being prepared?
The reason I bring up this question is because, in my place anyway, the microwave oven prepares about
90% of what we eat.
But is a microwave adequate for breaking down the starches claimed in the article to be a problem in raw potatoes? Or for killing e coli in some of the other foods mentioned?
Apparently microwaves actually are suitable for cooking foods in general, such as claimed in this NCBI article:
"In conclusion, no significant nutritional differences exist between foods prepared by conventional and microwave methods. Any differences reported in the literature are minimal."Source:
/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7047080 But beyond that websearching seems to produce some differences of opinion as to how effective microwave ovens are in doing things like breaking down starches, killing microbial contaminants, etc.
(For example: "Microwaves don't kill bacteria; but heat from microwaves kills bacteria." Didn't know that).
Yes, this is a different subject getting away from this thread's topic. But it is also a question that needs to be considered.