Jessx said:

Thanks but no thanks on food radiation. No way for me. I want the food to be actually clean and safe and not just have it nuked to try to kill off the deadly bacteria and in the process god knows what other nutrition is killed. Your body needs live vitonutrients from fresh clean natural food to give you life and keep you healthy.

I want the right to refuse this zomby food and I think you will be singing a new tune when you are all full of cancer.

So naturally you eat all your food raw since cooking with heat kills pathogens and reduces some of the nutrition as well.

The depth of your ignorance is only exceeded by your stupidity.

I want the right to refuse this zomby food and I think you will be singing a new tune when you are all full of cancer.

The word “profit” is rapidly on it way to becoming another obscenity. The Left has gotten practically every word that might make someone feel bad categorized under hate speech, and with their opposition to any form of enterprise, private business, or self-sufficiency whatsoever, soon words that have any sort of positive meaning for the self will fall under some quack category… maybe “intolerance for the less fortunate” or something, as if everything in the world has come about by chance and not by someone’s honest effort or cunning brainwork.

In addition to levels of up to 35 kGy being used for foods being given to the most weak and immunologically deficient individuals (with no ill effects of any kind ever observed) NASA actually uses some of the highest dose levels applied to any food (sometimes 50+ kGy) to assure they are 100% sterile of even the most radiation tolerant organisms for long term storage and safe use on the space station or other space flight applications. A stomach bug can become a big big deal in orbit and you can’t afford to throw away food that goes bad when getting more there means a space launch. Decades of experience shows it to be 100% safe. I could easily see how levels that high might make the food seem a little bit bland or take away some of the smell, but nobody ever said that space foods are a culinary masterpiece to begin with.

        Giant Pulsating Brain said:

One of the concerns I have heard is that it breaks down nutrients in the food such as vitamins.

It might do this, but I don’t think it would do it by very much at normal dosages, but maybe it would be noticable at the super high doses that is used for special hospital diets for weak immune systems or something.

Hospital food that has been irradiated to sterilize it is treated at 25-35kGy. Detailed nutritional analysis has shown that there is no more reduction of complex vitamins than normal thermal processing. This from the book: “Food Irradiation” by V. M. Wilkinson, G. Gould, Woodhead (1989)

I still don’t see the problem.

Lets say it reduces the vitamin content by a few percent. Is that a huge deal? Don’t most people in the industrial world get more than enough vitamins and nutrition in general anyway? I think the nutrition problems are usually not that we don’t get enough of something but we get too much of some things (fat, cholesterol, unneeded calories). So what would be the big deal of a vegetable has a little less in it when you’re already getting 300% of the daily dose needed? I don’t think there’s very solid evidence that having amounts much more than the needed amount has that much benefit. If food irradiation does cut down on nutrition and it drops the daily dose to 290% from 300% of a vitamin, then is that going to make a big difference?

I can only think it might for people teetering on the edge and they should be taking supplements anyway.

Maybe it would be more concern for third world countries but still I think it would be worth the small trade off if it improved food safety and shelf life and therefore allowed more to be used even if it meant a very small reduction in vitamins.

Oh and by the way, consumer attitudes and market response to irradiated food are actually rather good. Research by retail industry organizations shows that concerns about irradiated food is among the lowest for food safety issues. It’s not hard to see the day when the the Radura logo is a selling point with food shoppers, especially if there are a few more scares that get international attention.

Tapeworm is a lot nastier than people give it credit for. Infection by the eggs of tapeworms(either through poor hygien or poor access to safe, treated drinking water) can lead to life-threatening illness and brain damage(neurocysticercosis; tapeworm cysts embedded in the brain); it’s the leading cause of epilepsy in the developing world.

Studies have shown that a dose of about 3 kGy is enough to effectively eliminate the E.Coli threat 100% of the time and to greatly reduce listeria, salmonella, parasitic protozoa and most other problem organisms. At about 4-5 kGy the effectiveness against common food born pathogens approaches 100%, if done properly. Even lower doses of about 1 kGy will be enough to disinfect E. coli and listeria from all but the most heavily contaminated products.

That is a very major improvement at very low levels. Ground beef, for example, has no significant changes at 8 kGy, so it is easy to disinfect and not change the product quality. Produce can be disinfected without much degradation too.

It’s been shown that if meat irradiation were standard it would eliminate most meat-based food poisoning.