Microwaves action on milk for infants (fwd)

[Bernard Murray]

(Just for the sake of completeness, rather than a warning against microwaving)

I seem to remember reading a few years ago (I think it was Int. J. Peptide
Protein Res., but I don't have the reference to hand) that microwaving
solutions of amino acids would cause a degree of racemisation.  This
probably involved a strange solvent or an extreme of microwaving but
would show that you *can* cause structural changes.  I do not know if such
changes could occur in proteins and I doubt if they would be be any cause for
concern with respect to warming up milk.

Also, one person mentioned sterilising plastic tubes in a microwave.  I
assume that the beaker enclosing them had some water in it as microwaving
empty plastic tubes (dry) could prove rather nasty.  I also find that, for
sterilisation of relatively small amounts of liquid, less than a minute
in the microwave is sufficient - not even enough to boil the solution.
After all, its not the heat that is needed to kill bacteria/yeast etc.

		More power to your microwaves,
			Bernard

Bernard Murray, Ph.D.
bernard at elsie.nci.nih.gov  (National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda MD, USA)