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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Irradiated Food
  • Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:26:59 -0600


The Federal Register section on FDA policy on irradiation is found at
http://www.foodsafety.gov/~lrd/fr070404.html
-----------
"Nuked Food" - The Dangers of Irradiated Food
Our Deadly Daily Food
http://www.truehealth.org/nukedfood.html

Nuked food is the common term for irradiated food - food which is
exposed to high level radiation for the purpose of sterilizing it. This high
level radiation penetrates the food which, as anyone who has paid attention
in chemistry knows, raises the energy level of the atoms and molecules which
the food is composed of. This results in myriad "free radicals" - atoms which
have lost an outer electron due to having absorbed a shot of higher energy.


And instead of being chemically neutral, such an atom has now become strongly
attractive. This will break and re-arrange many chemicals bonds in the atoms,
molecules and chemical compounds of the cells of the food under radiation. So
much so that the cellular processes of any micro-organisms in the food are
disrupted, and the micro-organisms in the food are killed.

The cells of micro-organisms live and die by exactly the same chemical laws
and processes that our cells live by. And if our cells were subjected to the
same radiation, they would die just as surely.

The idea is that the radiation dissipates, and things return to normal. But
we have come to know and understand that free radicals form stable compounds
that are different from the original chemical compounds, and that the free
radicals and the altered compounds are harmful to us in many, many ways -
among them a trigger for heart diseases and cancer.

The greatest danger, in my view, is the havoc such free radicals can wreak in
the delicate chemistry of reproduction, when our cells, or an ova, divide and
replicate - a cell or an an ovum is about the same size as a micro-organism -
and in the growth and development of the embryo, when it is acutely
vulnerable to any abnormalities.

Personally, I cannot understand how people can be so irresponsible to allow
and apply what is such a powerful free radical creation tool that it kills
all micro-organisms in the food - micro-organisms which live and die by
exactly the same chemistry as we do. To me this is incomprehensible.

Here then is a calm and cogent article by an accomplished and respected
Cancer research scientist, plus a few abstracts (no abstracts were available
for many more papers) of animal trials done with irradiated food, as listed
in the Public Archives of the National Library of Medicine.




Original Article:


George L. Tritsch, PhD
Cancer Research Scientist, Roswell Park Memorial Institute, New York State
Department of Health.

I am speaking as a private citizen, and my opinions are my own, based on
thirty-three years of experience since my doctorate at Cornell Medical
College, Rockefeller University and, since 1959, as a cancer research
scientist and biochemist at Roswell.

I am opposed to consuming irradiated food because of the abundant and
convincing evidence in the refereed scientific literature that the
condensation products of the free radicals formed during irradiation produce
statistically significant increases in carcinogenesis, mutagenesis and
cardiovascular disease in animals and man. I will not address the reported
destruction of vitamins and other nutrients (what? - more nutrient
deficiencies?; my comment) by irradiation because suitable supplementation of
the diet can prevent the development of such potential deficiencies. However,
I cannot protect myself from the carcinogenic and other harmful insults to
the body placed into the food supples and I can see no tangible benefit to be
traded for the possible increased incidence of malignant disease one to three
decades in the future.

Irradiation works by splitting chemical bonds in molecules with high energy
beams to form ions and free radicals. When sufficient critical bonds are
split in organisms contaminating a food, the organism is killed. Comparable
bonds are split in the food. Ions are stable; free radicals contain an
unpaired electron and are inherently unstable and therefore reactive. How
long free radicals remain in food treated with a given dose of radiation or
the reaction products formed in a given food cannot be calculated but must be
tested experimentally for each food. Different doses of radiation will
produce different amounts and kinds of products.

The kinds of bonds split in a given molecule are governed by statistical
considerations. Thus, while most molecules of a given fatty acid, for
example, may be split in a certain manner, other molecules of the same fatty
acid will be split differently. A free radical can either combine with
another free radical to form a stable compound, or it can initiate a
[chemical] chain reaction by reacting with a stable molecule to form another
free radical, et cetera, until the chain is terminated by the reaction of two
free radicals to form a stable compound. These reactions continue long after
the irradiation procedure.

I am bringing this up to give you a rationale for the vast number of new
molecules that can be formed from irradiation of a single molecular species,
to say nothing of a complicated mixture such as food. Furthermore, the final
number and types of new molecules formed will depend on the other molecules
present in the sample. Thus, free radicals originating from fats could form
new compounds with proteins, nucleic acids [DNA], and so forth.
[ found at: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/8979/page26.html ].






  • [Livingontheland] Irradiated Food, Tradingpost, 08/22/2008

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