Irradiated Food-Do You Know about It?
Again, weekends for me are about sharing articles or fun stuff & less work for me. So, as for yesterday's post, that was just a joke.. NOT ME! Sorry for the misunderstanding. I wish I had thought that up!
But on a more serious note, this article on irradiation of food caught my eye. I don't know a ton about it but it will spur me to do some more research for sure. Below is the article. Give it a read & let me know what you think....What is Irradiated Food and Why Should I Avoid It?
By Marygrace Stergakos, Green Options
If you’re a Whole Foods shopper who occasionally peruses the market’s free pamphlets and brochures, you might know a thing or two about the dangers of irradiated food–at least, that’s where I learned about it. We hear a lot of talk about harmful ingredients: dyes, preservatives, trans fats, and HFCS, for instance, but little is mentioned about this equally harmful process that can alter the molecular composition of the food you eat, damaging valuable vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, all in the name of making said food safer.
During irradiation, food is exposed to ionizing radiation in an effort to destroy microorganisms, viruses, bacteria, or insects that could be dangerous if consumed by people. In addition to sanitizing our food, irradiation can also be used to prevent sprouting, delay ripening, or increase juice yield–in other words, messing with a fruit or vegetable’s natural life process or progression. How exactly does irradiation achieve all these things? By damaging the DNA of the food in question, basically stunting any growth.
Considering how much time and effort is spent attempting to halt or reverse DNA damage to our own cells, it’s ironic that more attention isn’t paid to the process of food irradiation. We’re constantly told to eat more fruits and vegetables because they contain antioxidants, the things that fight free radicals (which are responsible for oxidation and thus, cell damage!) However, the vast majority of produce in this country is irradiated, therefore containing the very stuff we try so desperately to avoid!
Behind the jump, there’s a bunch more reasons why you should avoid irradiated food.
- In their natural state, raw fruits and vegetables contain valuable enzymes that aid digestion. Once these foods are irradiated, the enzymes are destroyed. Basically, its like cooking the food–though by looking at it you’d never know this, because it still looks like a raw piece of produce.
- Irradiating a food can cause it to lose a large percentage of its vitamin content.
- The long-term effects of irradiation are unknown, because the longest study on human consumption of irradiated food lasted only 15 weeks.
- Irradiation puts a band-aid on contamination issues in large-scale food production. For instance, conventional farmers and meat producers don’t need to worry about fecal matter getting on their food, because it will just be irradiated anyway.
- Irradiation creates super bacteria. Just like antibacterial soaps, the irradiation process can never kill 100% of the microorganisms living on our food. The ones that do survive will become resistant to irradiation, and therefore, of greater potential danger to us.
Green Options Media is a network of environmentally-focused blogs providing users with the information needed to make sustainable choices. Written by experienced professionals, Green Options Media’s blogs engage visitors with authoritative content, compelling discussions, and actionable advice. We invite anyone with questions, or simply curiosity, to add their voices to the community, and share their approaches to achieving abundance.
How can you tell if the food is irradiated or not? Is it labeled? If not, that's terrible that we can't tell what it is that we are purchasing?
I'll look forward to you writing more about this Jody!
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oh gawsh. One more reason I should get serious about a veggie garden. Now's the time to plant lettuce (I think).
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I think of all the things that they can do to food, irradiation seems the most harmless, healthwise. Due to the extreme pH of our stomachs, most enzymes never make it any further than that. And as for DNA, you don't want to mutate yours, because it's dividing, and keeping you living, and it can have bad consequences if it gets wacky, but I'm not sure how eating it would matter. I can see how it could change some vitamins, and how it could lead to less cleanliness overall.
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Julie, thank you for your input!
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I would have to disagree with you on that! First off enzymes begin breaking down our food as we chew. Some examples of where enzymes are visible in abundance would be in human saliva and in the human digestive tract. Saliva contains an enzyme that breaks down starches into their component sugars. While the stomach combines the enzyme pepsin with acid to speed the digestion of proteins. Enzymes are carried to the intestines to facilitate the digestion of fats. Enzymes are at work wherever there is life. Irradiation kills enzymes therefore "dead food". The less we cook our food, the less processing, the better for our quality of health.
Food irradiation has the highest potential to do the most long term damage in my opinion. Spending good money to eat organic foods only to have them "DOA" (dead on arrival) and that's what you get if it's been irradiated. How much can one consume safely, how many ex-ray's does one want? Think About it! I'll keep expanding my garden to include grains, vegetables, herbs and for the small amount of meats my family eats, we'll expand and raise that too over the next 3 years we will be self sufficient year round in our food needs. That's our goal.
To your health and long life.
TheBareFootWoman
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please, please do some background reading before providing your opinion on irradiating foods.
for background, i am the engineer at a radioactive sterilizer which insures medical products such as needles and test tubes arrive sterile.
food that has been irradiated does NOT give off any radiation. barefootwoman, there is no potential of irradiated food to give you any sort of dose. irradiated foods have been irradiated using gamma rays (essentially really powerful x-rays (not ex-rays)). these gamma rays do not have the potential to make other items radioactive (only alpha and beta rays can do that).
if you actually want to be concerned about radiation, stay away from bananas and peanut butter (both significant potassium-40 emitters). please do not take my word as fact if you do not want to, check any legitimate site such as any encyclopedia, wikipedia, howstuffworks, etc.
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