Mystery of the Sparking Broccoli

I learned something interesting the other day: broccoli sparks. Well, I actually discovered this several weeks ago, but I figured I must have somehow gotten microscopic flecks of metal into the plastic bowl along with some frozen broccoli.

This past week, I decided to nuke some broccoli and voila! Loud noises and sparks danced inside my microwave. My NEW microwave! Thinking that since this had happened before and there might be something wrong with my shiny toy, I decided I'd better confer immediately with my good friend, the Internet. Guess what my confidant told me? There were quite a few threads, including a news story, and they all seemed to reach the same conclusion:

• Dense vegetables can have higher amounts of minerals than some other foods and those minerals can act as arcs and cause sparks in the microwave.
• Sometimes, vegetables grown in very mineral-rich soil have high enough amounts of those minerals to cause sparking.
  
• Foods with a high saltwater content may also be conducive to sparks

Fortunately, no fires have been reported due to this phenomenon. But it is suggested you stop cooking the offending food in the microwave and use a different method instead. But I have to wonder why this has never happened to me before? To perform a little test, I actually put my broccoli last night in the old microwave, which happened to still be on the kitchen floor (if you've seen my kitchen, you know better than to ask) and nothing alarming happened. But I remember that my broccoli always had little blackened spots on after I'd heat it up in that microwave. My guess is that my new microwave is just more powerful than any I've had in the past. Yeah, that's me. The powerful microwave girl....I've just got to watch out for sparking veggies.!