The Dangers of Irradiated Food

The next time you pick up a Tyson chicken nugget, think about this: that yummy, bite-sized morsel was probably bombarded with radiation about 200 million times more powerful than a chest x-ray (1). Why? For safety, we are told. This process, called irradiation, is used to kill any growing pathogens present in food so it is sanitized and safer to eat. Indeed, since the 1950s irradiation has been endorsed by the FDA as a viable, harmless method of sanitizing foods for human consumption. However, the truth is quite different. Not only is irradiation not the safe, harmless food treatment most assume, but it covers up a particularly dirty issue.

Literally.

As noted by journalist Mark Worth, food irradiation, though tested as early as the 1920s, did not become a widespread practice until the 1950s when wheat and potatoes were irradiated to hold less bacteria and keep longer in storage(2). Even then, it was used only on select items. The irradiation process involves using either gamma rays, x-rays, or electron beams to zap foods-fully packaged-by passing them through an enclosed chamber where they are exposed to radioactive beams for specific periods of time at precise dosages. By destroying the DNA molecules of harmful organisms, it renders potentially dangerous bacteria in foods harmless (3). Thus foods are safe and everyone is happy.

But that's not the whole story.

As preliminary results arrived from research of irradiated food, researchers began to realize that irradiation might not be as harmless as they thought. Epstein observed that studies done by the USDA's Agricultural Research Service found irradiation produced significant losses of vitamins, especially the antioxidant vitamins A, C, E, and the energy promoting B vitamins (2). In fact, one source noted the loss of up to 95% of vitamin A in chicken, 86% of B vitamins in oats, and 70% of vitamin C in fruit juices (2). Still sound harmless? As if these figures were high enough, both chicken and oats are usually cooked before we eat them, which further destroys the heat-sensitive vitamin C. What's left is a food whose nutrition is highly questionable.