This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 7:38am and is filed under Agriculture, Farming, Environment, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
We could significantly decrease our risk of food poisoning if only we would agree to the use of food irradiation. We could protect ourselves but it appears we don’t really want to. We are too afraid to. Maybe if we changed the word from “irradiation” to “cosmic processing” we would accept it more readily?
Some urge consumers just go organic—as if this is somehow the safest choice. But the idea that organic foods are always safe to eat is, unfortunately, not always true.
Steven Harper, a food scientist and director of research for an organic food company says, “There really isn’t any difference between organic and non-organic as far as risks for cyclospora or e-coli are concerned. Still we have doubts.
Here are some irrefutable facts: Astronauts have been eating irradiated food since the beginning of the space program. Desperately ill patients with compromised immune systems are given irradiated food to guard against food borne infection. Food irradiation is endorsed by dozens of experts including the American Medial Association and the American Dietetic Association; a 70,000-member group that is the nation’s largest group of nutrition and food professionals.
Alfred Hitchcock petrified us by putting a shadowy figure in the bedroom. A shadow is far more terrifying than a well-lit armed robber.
At heart we still trust the farmer in Bibb overalls more than the scientist in a white coat, but when we are in need, we turn to those guys in white coats every time. We are even willing to let a complete stranger render us unconscious and cut us up in the operating room. We spend $18 billion on food supplements that are totally ineffective in preventing heart disease.
Go figure.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:29pm
The Chinese farmer is famous for never letting anything go to waste. I’ve seen stories about how they regularly collected nightsoil to use as fertilizer. I love the idea of organic only because we live in such a processed world, and I do try to buy organic to encourage independent farmers and to help encourage agriculture away from chemicals. But actually, when I think organic, I think manure. Irradiation sounds good to me!