Cooking potatoes in the microwave.

I remember reading an article years ago about the best cooking methods for preserving nutrients in different vegetables. I don't remember if the potato was covered but the writer believed the microwave was the best tool for a large number.

I don't worry about it though. Nutrition is not that hard to maintain if you eat a good variety of food. I cook things the way I want to eat them whether nutrients are lost or not.

Short answer...yes, cooking in the microwave is fine. Just be sure to prick them if you’re cooking in their skins! Messy exploding potatoes!

Longer answer...It’s actually better for some foods than more traditional methods. For example, some vegetables which you’d boil in water normally retain more of their vitamins because in the microwave you use a lot less water. This applies to the water soluble vitamins (C and the B complex). Steaming is the only method better than microwave for these vegetables.

Microwaves don’t cook at a temperature any ‘higher’ than other methods. I guess it just seems so from the fact that it cooks faster than a conventional oven. That’s because it cooks in a different heat exchange method. Conventional ovens use convection heating. (A molecule at the edge of your food gets warm in the hot air of the oven, and passes that heat onto the molecule in the seat next to it, which passes it on to the next molecule, as it were, all the way to the centre of the food mass ). A microwave uses electromagnetic radiation energy which causes ALL the water molecules to vibrate which produces heat via friction)

Not the most scientific explanation, but I’m no scientist!