Friday, August 22, 2008
THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN
They are talking about irradiating produce.
F.D.A. Allows Irradiation of Some Produce
People are going to be afraid of it.
This technology was ready fifty years ago when I went to MIT.
I knew guys who were working on it and I used to regularly go to taste panels of all kinds with irradiated foods.
I am still here.
It is a superior system of killing bacteria where you do not want to alter the chemistry of condition of the food material.
There is no residual radiation. Your teeth give you more radiation than a thousand bags of irradiated spinach.
But the consumer resistance was fatal to the technology.
This was 1955. Just ten years after the A-bomb was dropped. Over the years the dangers of radiation were well publicized. The threat of nuclear holocaust was omnipresent.
When peaceful uses of radiation began to emerge, say in power plants, the same resistance occurred. Then there was Three Mile Island. Chernobyl.
People are still squeamish.
I know that some of the beef in my grocery store is radiated. I am not sure that anyone else knows.
It doesn't worry me. I would be a lot more concerned about getting a dose of E. Coli or Salmonella.
Labels: food, technology
