Nuclear device for the kitchen, yes really

the

Then don't micro-wave it for so long. Most people here are talking about "irradiating" the food, when all this really means, in the real world anyway, is running it through a micro-wave oven for a minute or two. The only thing that really gets "irradiated" to sterilise it, is fruit fly larvae. But that a different type of sterilisation all together. :-)

growth

modified

toxic.

same

Theres is a diference to killing the bacteria and rendering the food resistant to bacterial growth. Once the food is opened to the environment bacteria will inevitably reapear unless it is resistant to growth then you have to question how much the nutrients have changed.

Its no use just saying they havnt changed much and doing nothing to determine how much.

Im guesing this is yet another one of those discusions where there wil be no proof whatsoever of any valid tests being done to determine the safety of this. (apart from maybe waving a gieger counter at it, or measuuring its calorific value in a burner wich would be luaghable)

I have an open mind, the trouble with the companies that try to push this stuff onto the market is that they foolishly beleive people have empty minds and have forgoten how many times in the past people claiming to be scientists have claimed things are safe then turned out to be very unsafe after 20 years or so, (and then it turns out the companies involved knew all along but would not publish the information becuase it was against their shareholders interests).

I dont think i have ever been subjected to food poisoning where there was even the remotest posibility it could have been prevented with iradiation rather than simple common sense.

I think the closed minded people are those who vehemently beleive something new and revolutionary is inherently safe untill proved otherwise.

Colin =^.^=

Well, that is an excellent question. Since I am not a lawyer, I won't try to answer it.

But reading back through this thread, I don't see it as an allegation. Do you think the AARP could or would bring suit as a result of this thread?

You don't have to answer if you don't want to. ;-)

--Mac

so? Im often eating fresh tomatoes and salad, theyr so easy to get from the local supermarket or grocer any time of the year, I dont see any call for iradiation here.

but maybe we are just more lucky here in the UK ? my local grocer/supermarket is only a few minutes walk away. Tescos even deliver to you door.

maybe if you were in space for a 10 year voyage to the next star system or something ...

Colin =^.^=

I assume no such thing. You are making quite a few assumptions yourself!

What fear?

You don't know me or what I fear or don't fear. You are right about the middle class part. ;-)

Well, I am not convinced that an ecological disaster is impossible in this century. I do think things are getting better, in general, but we need to take a long-term view on energy and agriculture. I think the greens really have their heads in the sand with respect to energy.

I don't disagree with this.

Well, we ought to take good care of the ecosystem until we have a guaranteed ride off of this rock. Just in case it takes longer than you think. I am all for colonizing other planets if it is possible, and if they don't have any obvious signs of advanced life.

HAND

--Mac

------------->

You mean those radioactive injections they used to diagnose my heart might make me sterile - and I thought the doctors were on my side.

Another Dave

Yeah. Remember the brouhaha when Reagan said that trees emit air pollution, too? It was politically stupid of him to say it, but it is true.

People who work with wood have to watch out for highly rot resistant woods such as tropical hardwoods, and redwood and so on. There is a reason they are rot resistant!

Oh, and there's the jellyfish emitting carbon monoxide, too. ;-)

--Mac

In message , Jim Thompson writes

Mine get nested, and if correctly posted and properly snipped it's usually obvious

And a 3 line sig is normally what's reasonable

m'kay ?

the

or

Yes, I have been to Italy and the freshest tomatoes there realy are fantastic (in fact they all taste good), but I think the problem here as i mentioned before is that they care about good looking produce with less regard to taste as it isnt such a visible selling point. My grandfather was a farmer I always remember the own grown strawberries, and my dad used to grow tomatoes in the greenhouse. However I dont seem to have very green fingers. A local farmer was complaining many years ago it was cheaper to leave his produce in the field and let it rot becuase the supermarkets could import stuff from abroad for less than the cost of harvesting it. the fact that it would be far less fresh seems totaly unimportant, they just pick it before its ripe so it doesnt end up over ripe in the time it takes to get here, and so it doesnt taste anywhere near as good but it looks ok.

I dont know anyone whos tasted iradiated food (not that has good sense of taste anyway).

Colin =^.^=

You can, but you can also get flamed for doing so

libel.

to

Mr. Thompson threatened to file a USPS document claiming that the AARP material is "sexually oriented advertising". Unless he genuinely holds that opinion of the AARP material, he would be filing a false report. (BTW, I'm not sure whether USPS forms are considered to be government documents anymore.) I am not in a position to determine AARP's opinion of such a filing.

As for the AARP, I want to know where they get their information. My first piece of AARP advertising (unwanted, but not sexually oriented in the least, in my opinion) arrived promptly on my 50th birthday.

Freaky? I think that depends upon how the food was modified. If for example the plant was modified such that the fruit contained what amounts to something like Lysol, that would be rather freaky.

On the other hand, genetic modification need not be so (nor is it likely to be so) dramatic.

Consider a hypothetical fruit that contains a small amount of natural vitamin C (ascorbic acid), but it is particularly vulnerable to a specific kind of bacteria. Now suppose some genetic engineer modifies the fruit to have slightly higher vitamin C content thus modifying it's pH value. If this hypothetical bacteria needed a specific range of pH to rapidly reproduce and thrive, then this simple modification could make the fruit last much longer. Is the new fruit especially harmful? Not necessarily, people need vitamin C anyway so in some ways the fruit would be distinctly more healthful as well as being more robust.

In message , snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org writes

Seconded

It's there to give a broad idea of what's going on, not a forum for scientific papers.

Skip the nuclear part and just get a big electron gun. That's what they're using for things like mangos and papayas in Hawaii. And the neighbors are a lot happier to not have a big lump of radio-cobalt sitting in a pit down the road. They use them on the US Mail in the Washington, DC area, too.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Washington State resident

You nearly did last time !

Wasn't this found to be detrimental to humans many years ago? Quite how it would affect us second hand, I have no idea.

A good idea.

Typical! Would you stand for local nuclear radiation? It might be used to stop men from fathering any new children.

Try buying fresh, local organic foods (if they exist there) and you will change your mind.

Not as dangerous as the loonies that accept change that the chem-co's want to impose on our foods. GM crops are not natural and the US will never change the UK mind.

Dave

The situation is a little bit more complicated than that. Ionizing radiation (IE: UV, X-ray, gamma, nuclear radiation) has enough energy to break chemical bonds, displace atoms, etc.

Radiation kills bacteria by virtue of breaking chemical bonds that make up the bacteria's DNA. If the damage is sufficient the bacteria will not be able to repair itself, nor will it be able to continue functioning, so it will inevitably die.

Ionizing radiation however is not tremendously descriminating. That is, the radiation will also damage the DNA of the food you are irradiating. The radiation will break chemical bonds, leaving "dangling bonds" in it's wake which then look around for other atoms to bond with. Ultimately the chemical structure of the food can be slightly modified if it is irradiated sufficiently to kill all of the germs on/in it.

This gives rise to at least a theoretical hazard. What if some of the hydrocarbon compounds that compose your food get modified into some other form which is either somehow toxic or perhaps carcinogenic? Gasoline is a hydrocarbon compound substance just like the food you eat, but that doesn't mean it is safe to drink gasoline.

So far as I am aware there has been no credible experimental evidence that shows irradiated food is carcinogenic or otherwise hazardous for human consumption. The problem is, no matter how hard anyone tries you cannot really prove that the food isn't carcinogenic and won't result in increased risk of cancer many years in the future.

In my opinion a risk versus benefit judgement needs to be made. The benefits of irradiating food are obvious and demonstrated, the food lasts much longer in storage while the consumer has less chance of suffering from food poisening. The risk has so far not been demonstrated (at least to the best of my knowledge), but in theory one may conceivably exist so some provision needs to be taken to consider it.

In my personal opinion the known benefits outweigh the possibility of any future risk, therefore we should not hesitate to use it. This is especially true in third world countries where starvation/malnutrition and food poisening are very real and tangible risks that regularly kill (or is a complicating factor in killing) large quantities of people. There are many things a person can and should be worried about in today's world, but I wouldn't personally put irradiated or even genetically modified foods anywhere near the top of that list. The economic and sociological concerns of peak oil are far greater and represent a much more imminent and probable risk:

In message , Jim Thompson writes

And learn to snip please ...

In message , Jim Thompson writes

They'd be much better in a redneck septic NG, I'm sure

as would you