Irradiated Food: It’s What’s Not For Dinner [pdf]
The Center for Food Safety and Food and Water Watch have written a no-holds-barred paper [pdf] on irradiated food. “Irradiated foods are abnormal. Based on research compiled directly from the scientific literature, this report describes the strange, sickening impacts on the smell, taste, color, and texture of food exposed to this invasive ‘treatment.’”
The two organizations have no doubt cherry-picked the data in their favor, but the strong opinions make for great reading. To my knowledge, I’ve never eaten irradiated food, so I can’t comment on the taste. But the concept makes me nervous, not from a fear of the process but a fear of how food companies will use it. There’s no motivation to fix sloppy production practices when you know there’s a safety net at the end of the line.
Irradiated food hasn’t caught on in the United States; probably consumers aren’t eager to buy a piece of meat that sports the government-mandated “irradiated” label. But it must have some staying power if these two groups focus on it as well as other, more obvious, food safety issues.
Derrick,
You probably have eaten irradiated food unknowingly, as many spices are irradiated. (Consumer Reports, cited below, says “Since 1985, the government has approved irradiation of spices, fruits, vegetables, pork, and poultry. In 1997 irradiation was OK’d for beef, and in 2000 for fresh eggs.”) The more research I do, casually or intentionally, the less I like irradiation.
Consumer Reports’ study: “In our tests of more than 500 meat samples from groceries in 60 cities-the largest test of its kind-we found that irradiated beef and chicken have a slight off-taste and come with the same handling and cooking instructions as regular meat.” Also from that page: “Meanwhile, the school board of Berkeley, Calif., became one of the first to pass a resolution explicitly prohibiting the purchase of irradiated foods for its schools. Its Nov. 6 resolution noted that there had been ‘no long-term health and side-effect studies on humans.’ “
Thanks for your good work.