A detailed theoretical analysis has been carried out to assess the role of lateral and radial irradiations on microwave heating of 2D cylinders for beef and oil samples. The lateral irradiation may represent the sample incident at one direction and the radial irradiation refers to sample exposed to uniform microwave intensities at all directions. For both lateral and radial irradiations, the effective microwave incidence from the source is assumed to be identical. A preliminary analysis on microwave heating of samples has been shown via average power within a sample vs sample radius for beef and oil samples. The samples with smaller radius are found to have larger average power with radial irradiation for both beef and oil samples. The hot spot formation within a sample is found to be a strong function of lateral/radial irradiation for various food dielectrics. The radial irradiation is found to be not favorable especially for large oil samples where the hot spot occurs at the center resulting in larger thermal gradient that contrasts earlier works which established that the radial irradiation minimizes the thermal gradient irrespective of sample size. The present work provides guideline on heating policy based on either lateral or radial irradiation depending on sample size and food dielectric properties. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.