If there is one thing that everyone loves to do, and needs to do, it’s eat. When people worry about what they are eating, they worry about how many calories are in their food, if there’s glucose in it, or something else along those lines, but what consumers generally think about when they eat is how much radiation has been pumped into their food prior. Yes that’s right, many foods that you eat are treated with different forms of radiation. Food irradiation is the process of treating food with ionizing radiation in order make it healthier to eat.
There are many benefits to the irradiation of food and this fact should be recognized because it is a fairly new technology that should be further studied and used. So what exactly is the process of food irradiation? There are three different methods used to irradiate food. One method that uses gamma rays, one that uses electron beams, and another that uses x-rays. The gamma ray method uses radioactive substances to give off the radiation. Either a radioactive form of the element cobalt (Cobalt 60) or the element cesium (Cesium 137) are used in the process.
Both of these radioactive elements give off high energy photons, called gamma rays, which can travel through food to a several foot deep depth. Neither of these elements give off neutrons, which is the reason the gamma rays can travel through the food without actually making it radioactive. This process has also been used to sterilize medical tools for years. Once the radioactive source is not being used it is submerged in a pool of water where the radiation is safely absorbed. The source can be taken out again and used further if needed again.
Now, I know what you are probably thinking. Isn’t there a lot of radioactive waste that results from the cesium and cobalt? In the food irradiation facilities, no radioactive waste is actually produced. The cobalt sources used in the process decay by fifty percent in five years, and are periodically replaced. The old cobalt source is then shipped back to the original nuclear reactor to be recharged and reused, so that no actual radioactive waste is produced. It is possible to get rid of cobalt as a waste, but it is a material that is not considered problematic to waste.
The process for cesium is very similar other than the fact that it takes a much longer amount of time (thirty-one years) to decay fifty percent and need replacing. Also, as opposed to cobalt which is a metal, cesium is considered a salt and therefore dissolves in water. The next form of food irradiation uses electron beams, or e-beams. The electron beam is a stream of high energy electrons that propelled out of an electron gun. In this process, the electron beam generator can be switched on or off, no radioactive substances are actually involved.
The beams in this process can only peirce food at a depth of three centimeters, so the food being treated must be no thicker than around an inch to be fully treated all the way through. This depth can be doubled by using another gun on the other side of the food. The electron beam process is actually the same process used in the back of tube televisions to light up the screen as well. The third irradiation process is the newest process of the three and it is still being developed. This process uses an X-ray machine that is stronger than the machines used in dental offices and hospitals to take pictures.
To produce the X-rays, a beam of electrons is pointed at a thin plate of metal, making a stream of X-rays that come out the other side. Similar to the gamma-ray process, this process can travel through thick foods and require heavy shielding for safety. Also, similarly to the electron beam process, this process does not use any radioactive substances, and can be switched on and off at will. All of these methods of irradiation work effectively to bring out the best in the foods they affect. The methods may sound like a lot of work, but they are absolutely worth the trouble because the benefits outweigh the risks in many ways.
One benefit of irradiating food is the prevention of foodborne illnesses. Treating raw meat in a slaughter plant eliminates bacterial foodborne illnesses such as Salmonella or Escherichia coli (E. coli) which cause many hospitalizations every year. The sterilization of food can be done through irradiation, which causes food to be able to be stored for years without any refrigeration. Although it sounds extremely convenient to never refrigerate your food, the levels of radiation used to sterilize food are too high to be approved for general use.
Not only can irradiation kill disease and sterilize food, but it can be used to preserve food by killing inactive organisms that cause food to decompose and spoil, extending the shelf life of the food. Foods like bananas that are transported into the United States often contain insects that can be cleaned out using proper irradiation, which is great, because who is not at least a little bothered by the idea of eating fruit fly eggs in their food? Also in fruit, irradiation can be used to delay ripening so that the ripening of fruit is timed just right to taste delicious.
Other than these benefits, food that is irradiated is generally not changed. The foods retain all their nutritional value and are not made in any way dangerous to consume. Once the ray of energy is absorbed by the food, energy is absorbed and the food is left slightly warmed. If a food, such as potatoes, have any living cells in them, the cells will either be killed or damaged. The killing of the cells may sound like a bad thing, but it actually helps the potato to have a longer shelf life by eliminating their ability to sprout.
Irradiated foods are stored, cooked, and handled in the same way that unirradiated food are. It is equally as possible for irradiated food to become contaminated as unirradiated food if proper food safety is not practiced. The safety of irradiated foods has been studied through testing on animals, as well as people. Extensive studies include animal feeding studies that last for many generations through many different species. Dogs, rats, and mice have been studied by feeding them irradiated food and so far, there is no evidence of any complications or adverse effects with the tested animals.
Also, for years NASA astronauts have been eating sterilized foods that were pumped with much higher levels of energy than foods that have been approved for general use. And finally, to top it all off, the irradiating of food has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Assistant Secretary of Health. Not only is food irradiation safe for the consumer, but it is safe for the work force that executes it as well.
Medical sterilization facilities that have been in operation for over thirty years, without a single fatal accident. The FDA has approved a variety of foods for irradiation is the United States including beef, pork, lobster, shrimp, crab, fruits, vegetables, lettuce, spinach, molluscan shellfish, poultry, seeds for sprouting, shell eggs, spices, and seasonings. All of these are common foods that can be found in the average everyday household kitchen. But how exactly can you find out if your food has been irradiated? The FDA requires that all irradiated foods bear the international symbol for irradiation.
The Radura symbol along with the statement “Treated by irradiation” or “Treated with irradiation” on the food label should be looked for. Although approved by many reliable organizations, the public opinion of irradiating in food is generally a negative one. The irradiation of food is thought of to be against organic processes and is generally avoided by those devoted to only eating organically. For example, my mother refuses to purchase milk that has been pasteurized through irradiation, which is really annoying because unpasteurized milk has that gross floating fat at the top and I have to remove it with a spoon before I drink it.
But aside from that minor annoyance, the pasteurization of milk is done very carefully, right before the milk is put in the carton, so that there are no chance of contaminants. A study done by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association found that the main factor influencing satisfaction how test subjects viewed irradiation of food was how well informed they are on the topic before seeing it happen. This makes sense, because from a blind eye pumping gamma-rays and X-rays into the food we are eating could come off as absolutely crazy.
Once informed of the reasoning behind the process, the test subjects generally all gave more approval for the process. But when it comes down to it, for some consumers, irradiation just seems unnatural, which is okay, because everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The irradiation of food is a fairly new, extremely beneficial process that deserves endless amounts of research. By irradiating food, we are able to preserve it, sterilize it, kill disease within it, and do many more great things.
With any process that involves radiation, it is important to look at the risk/benefit factor of the process, which is evaluating whether the process is worth executing or not depending on the amount of benefit versus risk that is involved with the process. The amount of benefit we gain from the process is much larger than the risk, especially if proper safety and disposal precautions are taken. As human beings, we have to eat to stay alive, so why not make sure the food that we eat is as clean and safe as possible?