Microwave Heating: General Concerns, Myths, and Realities

Despite being able to heat food quickly and from within, microwave energy has only had a small presence in industrial food processing. Several on-going niche processes have benefitted for decades from its unique heating ability, but the widespread implementation of the technology in the food industry, anticipated since the early days of microwave heating, has not materialized. This has not been from lack of effort or determination. Indeed, numerous attempts at implementing microwave heating in various food processes have been made over its roughly 70-year history only to be abandoned. Despite periodic analyses of why these processes fail, microwave heating continues to reincarnate in similar forms, only to be abandoned again. In this chapter, I examine the writings of several primary participants published since the advent of microwave heating and combine them with my own experience of over 30 years as a secondary participant to conclude that abandoned processes have a fundamental connection; they created products intended for direct sale to consumers whereas the successful niche processes create products that are sold to other businesses. In 1973, an analysis of the failed processes resulted in the conclusion, thereafter ignored, that the failures were due to microwaves, a high value technology, being applied to food processing, a low value industry. Ironically, it also explains the success of microwave niche processes.