General Discussion

This is what some (1) raw food enthusiasts argue for, against cooking with or without microwaves. They argue cooking can reduce the nutrients in food, so people should consume raw foods instead.

These people don't understand what they're talking about. There's a reason why the human race began thriving once we learned how to make fire and cook our food.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/food-for-thought-was-cooking-a-pivotal-step-in-human-evolution/

Cooking also increases the energy they can get from the food they eat. Starchy potatoes and other tubers, eaten by people across the world, are barely digestible when raw. Moreover, when humans try to eat more like chimpanzees and other primates, we cannot extract enough calories to live healthily. Up to 50 percent of women who exclusively eat raw foods develop amenorrhea, or lack of menstruation, a sign the body does not have enough energy to support a pregnancy—a big problem from an evolutionary perspective.

This would be true if all else was equal, but it was being argued here that microwaves may uniquely cause damage over other methods of cooking.

It may be being argued, but it's unsupported by any research. There is no special mechanism for microwaves to cause "unique damage" to food. It creates heat and heat cooks the food.

I get that people are critiquing the studies, but it should be fair to at least consider it uncertain if microwaves are healthy or not; it sounds like people should avoid them when they can, but if they want to take the risk, that’s for them to decide, and there should be discussions on if it is healthy or not.

It would not be fair to "consider it uncertain" whether microwaves are unhealthy or not. They've been around longer than most of us have been alive and there wasn't some mass health epidemic after they were installed in homes across the planet. None of this material has even given an actual mechanism for why microwaved food is 'different' or 'risky' compared to food cooked in other ways.

For example, plants given microwaved water did not fare well. This study seems easily reproducible, and I am open to it being explained if it is not thought to be relevant, but I’m curious about your thoughts on it: https://www.giftofcuriosity.com/plants-microwaved-water/

This woman's 'study' is absurd. She couldn't even remember to water the plants regularly and then blames "microwaved water" when one dries out and dies from a lack of water in the summer sun.

What I concluded from this experiment is that both stove-boiled and microwave-boiled water would help the plants do well under optimal conditions. But as soon as the plants were stressed (such as from a hot day with no water), the plants given microwave-boiled water proved to be much more vulnerable than the plants given stove-boiled water.

What exactly is the microwave doing to the water here? Is she suggesting that putting water into the microwave creates some new chemical compound that isn't H2O? If so, what is the new compound and how is it being created? Why is she the first person in history to discover that putting water in the microwave can somehow transform it into something else?

raw food

But we're not discussing raw vs cooked food here, are we? The article in question and the "articles" they sourced claim microwaving food is an inferior method of cooking than other traditional methods. Though, human evolution tends to agree that cooking your food is simply better.

but it was being argued here that microwaves may uniquely cause damage over other methods of cooking.

So the proper scientific way of proving that would be to cook the same food on the stove or other methods and test their difference in nutrients, which the article does not do by the way. You can't claim that the method does something different from the others without testing said methods too.

it should be fair to at least consider it uncertain if microwaves are healthy or not; it sounds like people should avoid them when they can, but if they want to take the risk, that’s for them to decide, and there should be discussions on if it is healthy or not.

If you're not going to believe the other studies and articles saying the opposite, then it's your freedom I guess. But consider this, I could change your quote into "It should be fair to at least consider it uncertain if cooking on a stove is healthy or not; it sounds like people should avoid them when they can, but if they want to take the risk, that’s for them to decide, and there should be discussions on if it is healthy or not", but would it still make sense to you?

plants given microwaved water did not fare well

I don't think that's really relevant to the topic, as humans have multiple organs to fend off harmful substances while plants have none. As for the article itself I can't comment on it too much, but a sample size of 2 is still too small, and ideally the experiment should be conducted in a way more controlled manner including a controlled environment, controlled source of water including not heated, heated, and microwaved, with maybe sources varying from tap water to diluted water. The problem could very well be the water source itself and not the microwave, or the plant itself was already dying regardless. And a quick Google search of "plants microwave water" gives me other articles debunking the myth, so that doesn't really help.