Dangerous inventions we cannot live without.

We go around our home tired, with headache and bad mood, thinking: am I sick? What’s the matter with me? Why am I feeling so low? I don’t have a temperature, but I am feeling like a wreck, why?

We are used to certain things around us, we are not questioning them, but we do not realize, that we expose ourselves constantly to dangerous things. We have some killers in our house but we don’t recognize them. And they are not hiding in our closet with a knife or a gun. They are proudly standing on our kitchen table and we invited them in our house with open arms.

They look quite humbly and ordinary and completely innocent, but are they innocent?

Let's start. Melamine. Plastic bright bowls and plates with red flowers and yellow dots. They light, they cheerful and do not break easily like regular china. First developed in 1830 melamine plates are dishwasher(not microwave) safe. The are not expensive. All dollar stores are full of them. Any size, all possible colors. Melamine was added as a filler to pet food. Pets started get sick, some died. In humans it can cause cancer. I like that word "can", carries some promise.

Okay, we are not eating any dishes. But what about chips and cracks? Are they safe if we put some hot food in them? Are we eating a poison with our chicken soup? A cup of tea with little melamine in it, no sugar, please.

While scientists debate, lets look at another enemy. Teflon frying pan. Non-stick pans appeared in our kitchens in 1960s. They were such a wonder: no scrubbing, no soaking, so easy to clean. But since then we are not so so happy about them The coating that makes teflon pans non-stick is polytetrafluoroethylene,(I hope I ‘ve got it right, the spelling I mean), PTFE for short. When this material heats up, it releases toxic gasses that can cause cancer, organ failure and other harmful health problems.

So we better stick to stainless steel or cast iron after all. If you burn you teflon pan, it will become useless anyway, as it sticks even more and chips, revealing other metal under the coating. And these pans are not cheap usually. Basically I tried the more expensive and the least expensive ones, and in my household they both last only a year maximum. Minimum 3 months for a $10 dollar frying pan.

I told myself recently: do not buy this stuff anymore, it's not worth the money and risk. Nobody wants to eat pieces of chemicals with your food anyway, and price you are paying for convenience is too high. Your health is more important

Another thing that I completely though reluctantly threw away from my kitchen recently: microwave. I remember not so long ago, 10 years back may be, my husband bought our first microwave. It cost approximately $300 dollars and was such a curiosity. But it was very convenient. You put some frozen stuff in it, press the button, 2 minutes later and it's ready to eat. No gas, no oven, no frying pan, fantastic! Absolute perfect. Or is it? People are still debating the issues.

There was a lawsuit in 1991 in Oklahoma. A woman named Norma Levitt had hip surgery, but was killed by a simple blood transfusion when a nurse "warmed the blood for the transfusion in a microwave oven!"

Logic suggests that if heating is all there is to microwave cooking, then it doesn't matter how something is heated. Blood for transfusions is routinely warmed, but not in microwave ovens. Scientists found that after eating microwaved food, haemoglobin levels decreased.

The violent change that microwaving causes to the food molecules forms new substances called radiolytic compounds. These are mutations that are unknown in the natural world. Ordinary cooking also causes the formation of some radiolytic compounds (which is no doubt one reason why it is better to eat plenty of raw food), but microwaving cooking causes a much greater number. This then causes deterioration in your blood and immune system.

In 1976 in Russia they banned usage of microwaves as unsuitable and dangerous for public health. Only after Perestroika, they lifted the ban, too many other problems, who cares if some schmuck gets sick?

Are these things indeed hurting us, should we refuse them and stick to the old "natural" things? Should we all go to the forest and cook our dinner there on a "real" fire in a tin can or is it dangerous too? Well, I think everybody has to have his own level of common sense and tolerance and stick to that. And if you have a microwave, try not to use it too much for cooking. Just in case.