Yes, I should buy locally--the six weeks per year that lettuce is in season - and assuming I can find lettuce at the farmer's market that isn't filthy and ragged, which often is the case.

"Radiation" means light, folks. They are shining light on the lettuce. Ohhhh....soooo scary! The light kills the bugs, and then they turn the light off. The lettuce doesn't emit light after the light was turned off, so it won't shiny any of this nasty light on you.

I know us treehuggers get scared when we see the word radiation, but this is one case we should carefully consider the benefits. We have a huge food spoilage problem in the first world, much of our food rots uneaten. This is tremendously in-efficient. When i was in costa-rica they had irradiated milk at the store because it does not require refrigeration. It was great! Irradiated fruit last many days longer then regular fruit. How many times have your strawberries molded in just two days?

A patronising tone doesn't strengthen your argument.

If the radiation was strong enough to disrupt the biochemistry of pathogens to kill them, then it's entirely *possible* that it might have left unpleasant and unusual by-products in the food that your metabolism can't deal with either.

I don't know either way, but poo-poo-ing this point is silly. Ionising (gamma) radiation is not much like visible light in the way it interacts with biochemistry.

Rgds

Damon

Unless they're bombarding the food with neutrons, it won't make the food radioactive. Nobody in their right mind would irradiate food with neutrons.

Gamma radiation would only kill the bacteria; it's akin to giving the food a strong x-ray.

For those who don't know, gamma rays are electromagnetic, like UV and x-ray radiation. Neutron, beta, and alpha are particle ratiation; neutron bombardment is the only type that makes things radioactive. Beta and alpha particles can't penetrate food deeply enough to kill all bacteria.

I'm not a nuke advocate (I actually oppose nuclear power), but in this instance, I honestly think the fear of irratiation as a pasteurization method is unfounded. It doesn't do any damage to the neutrients that cooking doesn't do--in fact, any "neutrient loss" alleged is far less than what heat would do.

It sounds very safe to "irradiate" our vegetables to get rid of "fecal matters", doesn't it? Or, does it?

Irradiating green vegetables such as spinach will destroy any phytochemicals that are in the food, which are vital for human health. Phytochemicals fight cancer and other deadly diseases, and are very, very important nutrients in order to be healthy.

Folks, this is scary business. This will increase disease rates in this country if no proper measure is taken.

To fight against this horrible decision by FDA, you can do the following, according to Mike Adams, a health advocate/nutritionist:

"1) Grow your own food. A little gardening is good. Grow whatever you can, even if it’s just a few kitchen herbs.

2) Buy your food at farmer’s markets, coops and CSAs. See http://www.localharvest.org/csa

3) Ask your grocery store if they are buying irradiated spinach. If they don’t know, demand they find out!

4) Raise hell with your Senators and Congresspeople, demanding they pass new laws protecting consumers from the FDA and its plot to destroy the nutritional value of the food supply."

I'll be doing #2 and #3, and possibly #4.

BTW, to give you guys an idea of irradiation that treehuggers don't seem to be opposed to (and often advocate), consider the method of water purification that doesn't use added chlorine or chemical sanitizers: exposing the water to UV lamps so the UV radiation kills the bacteria. Some folks use this method to keep their pools algae free rather than using large quantities of chlorine.

Gamma rays, like UV radiation, x-rays, visible light, infra-red radiation, microwaves, and radio waves, are electromagnetic radiation. Unlike UV light, which can't penetrate beyond the surface of most food, gamma rays will pass all the way through the food, killing bacteria throughout.

Between using chemical disinfectants that end up in our water stream and zapping food with gamma rays to ensure food safety, I prefer the later. I repeat, gamma irradiation DOES NOT turn food radioactive. As far as I can tell, fear of this kind of pasteurization is rooted in ignorance and irrational fear of anything called "radiation," not legitimate concerns about food safety.

Its interesting that the food industry feels its cheaper to irradiate everything than to clean up their unsanitary practices that are introducing fecal matter into the food supply in the first place.

I find it very hard to cut thru all the "evidence" to form an opinon on the safety of iradiation, but my gut tells me that anytime you process, in this case irradiate, a raw food, its damaging it in some way, and reducing its nutritional value.

One thing I really dislike is the ease with which the FDA, and agribusiness introduces new euphemisms at will to hide what they are really doing to our food supply.

Once again the FDA completely ignores public opinion - the public it supposedly serves - and gives agribusiness exactly what it wants.
The Radura symbol is a case study in making a logo appear exactly what it doesn't represent - green.
The next line is to boycott supermarkets that sell irradiated food.

Let me qualify my prior statements a bit more:

Quoted from above:
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Irradiation works by splitting chemical bonds in molecules with high energy beams to form ions and free radicals. When sufficient critical bonds are split in organisms contaminating a food, the organism is killed. Comparable bonds are split in the food. Ions are stable; free radicals contain an unpaired electron and are inherently unstable and therefore reactive. How long free radicals remain in food treated with a given dose of radiation or the reaction products formed in a given food cannot be calculated but must be tested experimentally for each food.
____________________
Rather than universally approving irradiation, I think individual food studies should be done to see which items react to irradiation in what manners. Free radicals don't just sit around waiting to be ingested to start reacting; they are reactive and would start reacting to the food they're in, causing oxidation, much as the free radicals our own bodies produce as a part of our own metabolism do oxidative damage to our own bodies. The consequence of this would be more oxidation in our food. Compared to the risks of infection and contamination by bacteria, I don't think it's such a bad option.

As for this, from blackangel:
______________________
Irradiating green vegetables such as spinach will destroy any phytochemicals that are in the food, which are vital for human health. Phytochemicals fight cancer and other deadly diseases, and are very, very important nutrients in order to be healthy.
______________________
I concede that irradiating greens does destroy phytochemicals; that's not in question, but what needs to be considered is the extent of damage. Irradiation does not completley purge the greens of phytochemicals; it destroys some of them. If all them were to be destroyed, the food would look and taste dramatically different. Cooking and digestion also destroy phytochemicals, and if I remember correctly, they destroy more of the phytochemicals than the levels of irradiation used to kill bacteria. Now, if you're a raw-food-ist, I understand the opposition, but I don't think most people exclusively eat raw food.

I know the Canadian and European standards for food safety are at least as stringent if not more so than the FDA's; the Canadians didn't let Monsanto bully them into approving rBST bovine hormones. If "cyclobutanones" are present in significant quantites, what do Health Canada and the EU food safety organizations have to say about that? What kinds of foods produce cyclobutanones? (They don't just form out of nothing; the chemical building blocks must be there.) Char-grilling meats produces heter-cyclic amines, which are carcinogenic, and grilling vegetables destroys phytochemicals and produces other pyrolytic products as well. I contend that if these cyclobutanones are found to be comparable in impact to grilling vegetables, they should not outweigh the risks of bacterial infections, which sicken and kill many every year.

"Irradiating green vegetables such as spinach will destroy any phytochemicals that are in the food"

Source?

Right, because we can all just totally do without nutrition in our food. Bah, why would we ever eat it for stuff that's good for us?
[/sarcasm]

There IS such a thing as good bacteria, you know. We need it as much as the nutrition. Without it, our immune systems weaken and we're more susceptible to diseases, viruses, and sicknesses which aren't normally a problem.

The Radura symbol looks so cozy - like a head between two boobs. Makes me want to buy this stuff, and now that the FDA says its safe, well...

Of course it might be a head kissing an, err, backside.