Is Food Irradiation Starving Us?

Our government here in the U.S. and most other nations of the world have been irradiating some of our foods increasingly from simple bacon since the mid 1950’s. They say it saves the aggravation of food manufacturers lawsuits from the lessening of process contamination, but does it really work ?

Do We Know everything about irradiation fallout ?

First of all, the U.S. and other countries implementing this process has known almost from the beginning have known that any food, after being irradiated looses some of its nutritional constituents including much of their enzyme contents. This tells us that, for instance, that vegetables, once irradiated, even though they are still raw, loose close to as much of their vitamin/mineral content as does plain cooked and even canned vegetables. These were finding as this process evolved through the years. What this is saying is that eating raw vegetables doesn’t really give a person the advantage of ingesting greater amounts of vitamins, minerals and also enzymes as is the case with the not irradiated vegetables. It also says that in reality, those countries irradiating vegetables are effectively being undernourished as compared with not irradiating their produce.

So, what is this telling us ?

For the true vegetarian, this is not very sobering news. After all, one reason this sector of our population follows this type of diet is usually because of animal contaminants and that both fruits and vegetables are considered clean and more nutritious. Nonetheless, fresh fruits and vegetables in their raw state can provide a person with more than 75 % greater vitamin/mineral nutrition than the same quantities that have not been irradiated, but were cooked normally.

So, what does irradiation accomplish ?

We have to keep in mind that its purpose is to destroy bacteria that could possibly survive until it reaches the consumer level, but does it ? We are told by those who administer the process that some of the bacteria survive to begin multiplying again and sometimes reach the prior irradiation level soon after. So, though the problem of bacteria soon returns, the lost nutrition in the irradiated food does not. It seems that the meat or vegetable processor has a protective insurance, probably against lawsuits, but the consumer loses a big percentage of its food nutrition. Because more and more of our food supplies along with that which is imported and thus lowering the average nutritional content of these foods, isn’t it even possible that having to eat more to give us the needed level of nutrition is at least a partial cause of our nation’s obesity problem ? Whatever it does accomplish, radiation is dangerous, requires special handling and its byproducts produce more pollution for the world, which none of us need right now.