News

Good food — glowing with irradiation

Watch out for the new symbol shown here, the sign of irradiated food.

Whether you believe food irradiation is designed to cover up poor standards in the food production industry, or is the best thing since boiling, irradiated food will soon be tempting you from your supermarket shelves.

Most research shows that food irradiation is safe and has no harmful effects on the wholesomeness of many foods, provided care is taken to get the dose right.

Keeping that dose right may be the problem, of course, as food shippers look for ways of retailing that jumbo load of soggy strawberries before they become a purely liquid asset, but no doubt our government will legislate for appropriate controls.

Anyway, expert opinion has it that irradiation cannot make bad food good, and that over-irradiation will make food smell and taste ‘off’, so the consumer will still have some power. If food irradiation is effective the gains may be great, since more than a quarter of harvest food is lost through spoilage, and irradiation may make chemical treatment of food less necessary. That would be of particular importance in developing countries, where food loses may have enormous economic significance.

However, irradiation plants cost several millions of pounds to build, and investment in them may not reach the top of the economic agenda in developing countries in the near future.

At present, food irradiation looks like a technological fix for the over-consumption problems of the developing world — a way of keeping up our lifestyle with maximum efficiency and minimum risk. While food irradiation may be safe, it is not necessarily sensible.