I had two super-nummy eggs this morning. I thought if you cooked correctly you didn't have to worry.

Well, viruses are small enough that microwave radiation "misses" them. Yet, if you stab someone with an icicle, and stick it in a microwave, the microwave will break down your DNA enough that anything you leave behind on the icicle can't be traced back to you.

So a commercial microwave is enough to get you acquitted for murder, but not enough to prevent the common cold.

Well, viruses are small enough that microwave radiation "misses" them. Yet, if you stab someone with an icicle, and stick it in a microwave, the microwave will break down your DNA enough that anything you leave behind on the icicle can't be traced back to you.

So a commercial microwave is enough to get you acquitted for murder, but not enough to prevent the common cold.

I think if you stab someone with an icicle, putting it in the microwave would be a good way to dispose of the murder weapon...

When I was in the cullinary arts program for CSN they made us take a Safety class that focused on food born illnesses. I did not eat for three days when we got into how many things can live through freezing and cooking, even when you heat things to the proper temperatures.

Wasn't that like a short story I read in high school? The lady killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then cooked it for dinner so when the inspector came over he dined on the murder weapon?

You don't need to microwave the virus, just raise the temperature in the egg to 160 degrees.

http://askville.amazon.com/temperature- ... Id=1829676

Not to split hairs, but the hippies claim you can use the microwave to kill viruses...

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/loa ... 15264.html

of course they are hippies so take that with a giant grain of salt...

Some researchers hope to use microwaves to destroy viruses, but the technique has so far proved ineffective. The water surrounding viruses absorbs the energy from microwaves. The virus doesn't receive enough microwave energy to be affected, much less destroyed.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/modern/light-virus1.htm



I take that to mean that the average nuking of food is not sufficent to kill a virus. And, generally speaking, most people do not autoclave their leftover pizza.

Can you find anything on that, Hop? I googled and saw a couple of things that said a virus will deactivate at 160 degrees and others that said 167-212 degrees, but none of them were reliable sources...just yahoo answers and stuff.

Yes, it counts, but it doesn't say anything about deactivating viruses with cooking temperatures. Only bacteria. The only mention of viruses is at the beginning when it says they can contaminate your food.
I'm looking for something that states specifically at what temperature a virus becomes deactivated...and is it universal or do different virii require different temperatures?