Nuclear device for the kitchen, yes really

on

so are you saying that an exclusive diet of iradiated food is unhealthy ?

Colin =^.^=

Ye gods!

Cheers Terry

Many dairy farms. And repeatedly visited a plant that processes millions of litres of milk a day. There all raw milk gets assayed for bacteria, and the individual farmers payout is graded accordingly. too many high-bacteria loads and the farmer gets canned. That this process is in place tends to suggest that hygiene standards vary - exactly what one expects when people are involved.

Have you ever looked at a cow? they shit all over themselves. Cow shit is nice and runny, and splatters very well on concrete. Fecal contamination is fairly difficult to avoid. probably why dairy workers wear gumboots and use hoses a lot.

Cheers Terry

you eat")

it did.

sprout.

boost...

around us.

something

and there have been a few interesting, toxic failures too (potatoes IIRC).

its a shame that cooking prions doesnt kill them though. not that it has anything to do with irradiating food.

yep. easier said than done though.

Cheers Terry

Most of the citrus _fruit_ (*) sold in the US comes from Chandler Heights, Arizona (or Mexico). Citrus _groves_ are self-shading... I only have 4 trees, 1 orange (Arizona Sweet), 1 lime, 1 lemon and 1 grapefruit (Texas Ruby).

(*) Most citrus _juice_ comes from Florida, it's more sour and less suitable for _fruit_ uses.

Arizona is much like Israel, just add water and anything grows. Trivia: Most of the cotton consumed in the US is grown right here on the Pima Indian Reservation.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

On Tue, 21 Jun 2005 23:50:43 GMT, colin wrote in Msg.

An exclusive diet of anything is unhealthy.

robert

["Followup-To:" header set to sci.electronics.design.] On 19 Jun 2005 22:43:23 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in Msg.

Bullshit. Rather than exporting yet another expensive, complicated to maintain and possibly dangerous (if radioactive isotopes are involved) technology, the thirld world must find back to proper farming and food handling practises.

robert

you eat")

barrier - it did.

don't sprout.

boost...

Actually, a couple of days ago there was a lobby group demanding that the term "couch potato" be removed from dictionaries.....

Regards Ian

;-)

Of course, the best Grapefruit comes from the Coachella valley in California. There just isn't much available, the orchards have now become billion dollar developments...

Charlie

If you really want to, I noticed the other day in Costco (so our US friends could also likely get this) Australian lamb hocks which claimed on the pack not to need refrigeration. It didn't say "irradiated" but I suspect that's the only way that would work.

Regards Ian

(No, I didn't buy any.)

On Tue, 21 Jun 2005 08:14:37 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote in Msg.

He who likes to grow his own fruit shouldn't maybe move into the desert, wouldn't you think?

robert

of

I live in the UK so i gues i wont be able to get any, what a shame (grin)

I heard in one of the links here how if chicken is iradiated much more than is required to kill most of the baddies it can taste of burnt feathers.

Colin =^.^=

HUH?

You could actually again get medium-rare hamburgers in the better places ..

--
Cliff

Who sez?

Cooking actually MAKES some things edible.

--
Cliff

agreed. the question then becomes, how far reduced does it get in practice. clearly there is no point reducing contamination further than that required to meet the highest grade (and associated pay scale).

pretty much how we do it here.

here is where our opinions differ somewhat. the cow s*****ng process, by its very nature, often as not allows shit to pour down the back of the cow. They frequently shit all over their tails, too. Looking out the window (beef not dairy), the animals are clean, healthy and happy (and dont lie in their poo) *but* you wouldnt want to run your hand down the back of their legs then lick it.

food miles really dont help either. the longer its in storage/transport, the greater the potential for contamination.

Now we're talking!

Cheers Terry

Cheers Terry

?

Iradiation can be used on any food, so its not exclusive in the sense that i think you are thinking of, maybe we are talking at cross purposes here? ie if you just eat potatoes or seomething then its not healthy, wether theyr iradiated or not, but if you take an otherwise healthy diet of food and iradiate it all would it be unhealthy ?

I thought the idea was to potentialy iradiate all food even 'fresh' foods such as fruit (to kill pests etc) and vegetables as well as meat/grain etc before it is cooked.

of course if you did a scientific test feeding rats one type of food exlusivly (such as iradiated or GM potaoes) then you would compare it with the results of feeding them the same food that was not iradieted as well as, also cooked and iradiated+cooked potatoes etc. otherwise the results would be meaningless.

Im not sure what food rats eat tbh, but maybe you could take a normal rat diet and iradiate it and compare ...

The food industry is making such advances in food and contrary to their claims there is evidence to sugest that there are significant changes, albeit small, but unlike anything we would naturaly consume and with as yet unknown consequences.

If a pharmacutical company introduces a new drug onto the market it first has to undergo incredibly stringent tests to ensure it is safe and determine its efectiveness. this costs millions and takes many years, even so a few drugs slip through wich are withdrawn many years later becuase of problems with them.

However with a pharmacutical drug you can wiegh up the risks and benefits and make a choice of usualy more than one drug based on the best benefit/risk ratio. however the food industry is trying to force these new foods on all of us and if they get their way we might not be able to make a choice, and tbh the only benefit I see is not to me but to the profit margin of the food industry, and the risks well theyr unknown so its pot luck. therefore the risk benefit choice to most people is a non starter.

As to being able to make alternate choices I think that making the food supply and preperation chain consistently hygenic is a far more effective way to make food safe and probably far more economical in the long run if you take into acount the total econimic impact, yet the food industry is too short sighted to see this point of view, also one individual company does not directly profit by the nation being healthier.

In the report posted here the US food industry was put in a very bad light indeed, saying 30% of the population is afected every year by food poisoning, maybe just a lot of people are trying to get compensation or just trying to get off work or something or just the type to seek help for even the most minor ailment, but even so its very damming, the report states the total economic cost is 100+ billion/yr, yet it is states that it would only cost 1bn over 20years to introduce a suficiently efective QA schemme, yet the political will/money is not available for this. I wonder how much all the energy the iradiation machines consume would cost over this period ?

I dont even think that iradiating everything is the answer as it will alow food companies to become even more complaicent. its presumably always the poorly managed establishment that cuases most of the problems with inexperienced/untrained workers that start the chain of contamination and this gets pased through the whole food processing chain. who knows what problems these machines in the hands of poorly run factories will cuase ?

I would think machines that procesed live animals into meat that completly avoided contamination from the digestion system etc into the meat would be a better place to put scientific effort rather than iradiation machines.

I wonder how much the reason for doing this is that new technology is more exciting and perhaps more politicaly sexy than doing something boring like making things cleaner ?

Im all in favor of scientific advances in food as much as anything else but there has to be a visible benefit/risk ratio and a choice. this is something that the food companies dont seem to appreciate when they try to sell these things to the rest of the world, but maybe they havnt got used to not having to consider it in the US.

something i find exciting that would be relavent here is silicon chip biodetectors.

Colin =^.^=

And the master of the obvious strikes again!

***** shu

I recall that someone bred (the old-fashioned way) an insect-resistant potato that had to be pulled from the market because it was toxic to people.

John