A curious debate is now playing out at the federal level about irradiating your produce. Meat has been going through the zapper for a while now to get rid of the more harmful salmonella and e coli that tend to frequent the meat coming out of the big, nasty slaughterhouses. However, this is the first time the FDA is considering allowing fresh produce to take the jolts.
While conventional science and institutions see nothing wrong with the irradiation of any food, considering the relatively “low risk” of the process, the process isn’t what you might think. Essentially the food is passed through micro-waves that zap unwanted micro-organisms that can cause illness. The food, however, is not fundamentally changed at the chemical level. According to the reports from Idaho State University, the results are similar to what happens when you freeze, cook, or microwave your food. 
Doesn’t seem so bad, right? Unless you prefer your food to be raw and in its original state. The degradation of essential enzymes that occurs when food is exposed to extreme heat or cold has spawned the raw food movement and shouldn’t be so easily written off. Just because the effect of blasting our foods with radiation seems negligible, does that mean we should do it?
Perhaps we should spend more time and resource management on cleaning up our food practices, rather than taking extreme measures like irradiation to kill off the e coli that ends up on our broccoli because we don’t harvest and ship it appropriately. Just a thought.
