Avoid Irradiated Foods!

...is what the wellness influencers are shouting. It will make you radioactive and give you cancer! ...More reasons to avoid the wellness scam

Irradiation is the process of taking a packaged and sealed food and sending it through a machine that briefly exposes it to a radioactive source. This kills any microbes within the food, greatly extending its shelf life without the use of preservatives. It’s among our most effective and least expensive ways to dramatically improve food safety.

Sources of radiation are usually:

• Cobalt 60 is what’s used most often. It emits gamma rays which kill the microbes by breaking chemical bonds and fatally damaging the DNA. Even if not killed outright, the microbe will no longer be able to multiply.

• Linear accelerators generate high-energy electron beams. This have the disadvantage of penetrating the food much less, but the advantage of being able to be turned off.

• X-rays. This is the newest and will likely become the most common. It combines the benefits of gamma rays’ penetrating power with a machine’s ability to be turned off.

As you can no doubt imagine, the word radiation is so scary that there is a substantial subculture of people — generally affiliated with the alternative medicine, anti-biotech, and/or organic food movements — who protest against irradiation. To most ordinary laypeople the idea of radiating your food sounds terrible; who wants their food to be radioactive?!

But that’s not the way radioactivity works. Light is radiation; when we turn off the room lights, the room does not remain residually contaminated with light. It’s off. There’s no light. No radiation. It’s the same with food irradiation; once it comes out of the machine, there is no radiation. It is perfectly safe.

The reasons stated by the major opponents of science-based food safety have more sophisticated reasons. Here is their main argument against the process, as stated by the Center for Food Safety, the anti-biotech and anti-pesticide nonprofit founded by attorney Andrew Kimbrell under the tutelage of infamous anti-science activist Jeremy Rifkin:

Radiation can do strange things to food, by creating substances called “unique radiolytic products.” These irradiation byproducts include a variety of mutagens – substances that can cause gene mutations, polyploidy (an abnormal condition in which cells contain more than two sets of chromosomes), chromosome aberrations (often associated with cancerous cells) and dominant lethal mutations (a change in a cell that prevents it from reproducing) in human cells. Making matters worse, many mutagens are also carcinogens.

Research also shows that irradiation forms volatile toxic chemicals such as benzene and toluene, chemicals known, or suspected, to cause cancer and birth defects. Irradiation also causes stunted growth in lab animals fed irradiated foods. An important 2001 study linked colon tumor promotion in lab rats to 2-alkylcyclobutanones (2-ACB’s), a new chemical compound found only in irradiated foods. The FDA has never tested the safety of these byproducts. Irradiation has also been shown to cause the low-level production of furans (similar to cancer-causing dioxins) in fruit juice.

Most of that is basically true, but it omits two EXTREMELY important points:

1. All of the above happens at levels far, far below established safety levels, which is why every major regulatory body on the planet recommends irradiation and has declared it perfectly safe;

2. The compounds that can be produced during irradiation are naturally occurring and already present in the food, and all still well below levels of concern.

We can even go through their statement point-by-point to fact check it:

• "These irradiation byproducts include a variety of mutagens."
  True. Under certain conditions, this can happen. It’s why the manufacturers have gone to such great lengths to avoid these conditions.

• "Substances that can cause gene mutations, polyploidy, chromosome aberrations and dominant lethal mutations in human cells"
  False. These mutagenic effects can only occur at radiation levels many times higher than are used in food irradiation.

• "Research shows that irradiation forms volatile toxic chemicals such as benzene and toluene"
  Yes, but… This process happens far more when you cook the food. Whether it was irradiated will have no impact on these levels.

• "Irradiation also causes stunted growth in lab animals fed irradiated foods"
  False. The study referred to blasted animal food with radiation far, far higher than food irradiation levels; it was enough to destroy all the Vitamin A in the food, which normally doesn’t happen. The animals’ growth was not observed to be stunted; it was merely noted that Vitamin A deficiency can stunt growth.

• "An important 2001 study linked colon tumor promotion in lab rats to 2-alkylcyclobutanones"
  Yes, but... But what they omit was that this study (published in a crap journal with an impact factor of only 2.4) was widely and heavily criticized; its major finding being fundamentally flawed in that there was no indication the tumor promotion was caused by the 2-ACB.

• "2-alkylcyclobutanones (2-ACB's), a new chemical compound found only in irradiated foods"
  True. They haven’t been found in non-irradiated foods, and they are a good marker to verify that a food has been irradiated. There has never been any evidence to suggest they are in any way harmful.

• "The FDA has never tested the safety of these byproducts"
  False. All of this has been extensively studied by the FDA, mostly in the 1980s when the process was initially introduced. No evidence of potential harm was ever found.

• "Irradiation has also been shown to cause the low-level production of furans in fruit juice"
  Yes, but... However it has only been produced at levels so low they are considered undetectable, and also, harmless.

And that, my friends, is the best the world’s most aggressive opponent of irradiation is able to come up with. Fear your irradiated food not — rather be glad it’s not full of Salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter, Listeria monocytogenes, molds, yeast, or insects.