Microwaves are Outlawed in Russia

This statement answers a long-time question that I pondered while in Russia: why does my host mom re-heat everything in oil and a frying pan?? They seemed to be an average middle-class family (as far as income is concerned) and I couldn't understand why they didn't have a microwave, which would save them a lot of time. Well, now I know. Apparently there have been all kinds of tests run on microwaves. In one test, the scientists took 2 plants of equal health and controlled every aspect of their growth, except one of the plants was given regular water at room temperature and one was given water that had been microwaved for 5 minutes and then cooled to room temperature. The one given the microwaved water did much worse than the one given regular water. At first this made me not want to use a microwave, but then I figured that I may very well live longer by not using a microwave, but all that extra time would be spent using the stove.