Radurised foods

[jacrob]

I'm south african and I'm always homesick for the food. So this week I bought imported chutney, bbq spice and mango atchar.

All 3 listed radurised ingredients on the list. The bbq spice being the worst with nearly every ingredient listed as radurised.

This is the first time I've seen food in Australia with ingredients listed as radurised, so I'm assuming it's compulsory in South africa to declare whether or not a food item has been exposed to radiation, and in Australia it's not.

The local gourmet store sells imported french butter, but the sales lady tells me which is radurised, and which is not. There is nothing on the label to indicate it's status.

This is freaking me out big-time! How am I going to know if the food I'm eating has undergone this treatment??? Or am I over-reacting (my usual state!)?

Is it as dangerous as my instinct is telling me? I've been blessing and cleansing every morsel that's passed my lips in the last 2 days.

This reminds of that Codex Alimentarius thingamy.

[Jeremy]

What is it exactly that you think ionizing radiation does to the food and how it affects you?

[jacrob]

killing all the goodness! I want some bacteria in my foods. I want raw milk and almonds.

And who knows what else it'll do...all that talk of detaching atoms and molecules sounds unhealthy.

I'm not a scientist but all the mucking around with natural food these
days is bothersome. One has to spend countless hours researching possible side effects etc and then discovering the foods you thought were good were actually harming the body and environment is providing constant catalyst for me personally.

Hence my plan to buy a small farm and grow my own organic foods...but until then I'll have to put in vast amounts of research time.

[Marc]

Yea, anything cooked loses goodness automatically. Try maybe finding recipes and making the products you need from scratch if it really worries you. Radurizing looks super scary and I wouldn't touch anything like that.

[Jeremy]

I'll have to research it further but considering I'm an X-ray tech working with and being exposed to ionizing radiation all the time, I'll give you my input.

Ionizing radiation can potentially cause cell mutation that would potentially cause side effects such as cataracts, cancer, birth defects etc. radiation poisoning induces vomiting, burns, and could eventually decouple DNA but this is in living tissue.

To say that it would decrease the level of nutrition is something I can't attest to but its purpose is to kill living organisms within the already dead food. The radiation has been either scattered outside of the tissue or absorbed at a cellular level and therefore gone. You would literally have to inject the food with a radioactive isotope for it to be radioactive and even then the half life of such isotopes are hours.

But like I said, I'll have to do more research on it as I've never heard of this process

[jacrob]

Hello Jeremy, thank you for your reply. Interestingly amongst many other concerns I have about radiating food was the half-life.