So either I can grind up the multivitamins I take now and put them in the garden, where they will benefit all the little creatures there, along with myself, or I can continue to eat the low quality fruits and vegetables I am growing and selfishly take my vitamin supplements.

The author makes some ridiculuosly disassociated conclusions in her claims. I see her credentials make her well qualified to be an environmnental activist, except that she has no qualifications as a scientist whatsoever.

It is a fact that the meat industry is not the cleanest process it could be. So I guess we will just keep applying healthy sanitizing chemicals directly to our food and hope that the free radicals they introduce into our system don't destroy our dna or induce cancer.

Then again, I would wonder exactly what you think of how I process the wild game I regularly kill and eat myself.

I reckon if I hadn't been out at Hanford for a couple decades and been made privvy to some of the "studies" that were done on irradting food, maybe I could accept some of her assertions might be true.

I'm afraid I file this one under "Bogus" as it pertains to irradiating food and it's effects, although she did get the issues about the food processing industry right in some aspects. Having worked in a slaughterhouse, I can attest to the poor sanitation conditions, and the limits of inspection, and this was a major beef packer. Basically, I could be up to my chest covered in raw beef guts from working on a machine, and walk out onto the processing floor without cleaning anything off of me. If ever there was a chance of cross contamination, that would certainly be a prime candidate. In this respect, irradiation is not going to be any better than what they are doing to compensate for the poor hygiene now, which is to chem wash the meat before final packaging. Given those two choices, I would still recommend irradiation as a safer and more controllable/thorough sterilization process. We'd be far more likely to get that implemented than to get the meat packers of the world to clean up their act by quality control measures.

The simple act of cooking food destroys a lot of the nutritional quality, and induces chemical reactions that generate mutagenic, carcinogenic, teratogenic, and generally toxic components not previously present in the food in a raw state. In fact, some of the food we eat contains a whole range of toxins that can effect us. Heck, the air we breathe contains natural carcinogens and toxins that we cannot regulate. Even some organic foods give off toxic chemicals as they sit on the counter waiting to be consumed.

My point was that food, whatever food you can get your hands on, can be made shelf stable by irradiating it; that irradiation is better than the alternatives for long term storage, because it requires less energy, is more thorough, is less damaging to the nutritional content of the food, and retains the food quality better than any other process. If you start with high quality hygenically sound raw food, then irradiation is going to be the best method of preserving that food, it's nutritional value, and it palatability. If you start with poor quality food, irradiation is still going to be the best way of making that food safe to consume, and preserving it that way, compared to any other method. Irradiation does not destroy food, in fact, in most cases not only does it sterilize it, but it stops the enzymatic processes that make foods chemically degrade, as with overripe bananas, which would also destroy the quality of sterilized food over time. Irradiation does not destroy nutrition any more than any other preservation method, usually less so. It also depends on the type of radiation applied. Generally Gamma and X-Ray radiation is far less deteriorating than electron bombardment, mainly because ionized electrons are also free radicals, which can propogate just like all free radicals do. Non-particulate ionizing radiation doesn't generate anywhere near the level of free-radicals. What it does is kill living organisms without a lot of tissue destruction. Irradiation doesn't "cook" the food.

So the question isn't whether you want to eat clean uncontaminated food vs. food that is irradiated, but whether you want the food you eat, the stuff that is being sold in bulk to the general public, to be sterilized with or without additives, regardless of the quality control. That Brazilian hamburger that we are buying and eating now is already contaminated as is, and is treated with Chlorine, Tri-Sodium-Phosphate, and a whole slew of other nasty chemicals to make it safe to eat. Chemical treatment of our food is already required to make it safe for the general public. What irradiation would do is eliminate the need for chemicals entirely without significantly adding anything else.