Food irradiation: Is it safe?

if you're like me you may have heard about food that is irradiated to make it safer and extend shelf life beyond that do we really know for radiating food is safe and effective I recently visited the food science labs at Chapman University and spoke with professor Anu Prakash she's internationally recognized for a research and food irradiation this is a great setup you have here all oranges but I think we're going to talk about more than oranges today we're going to talk about food radiation my patients ask you about this all the time there's a lot of confusion about it but once you explain simply what food radiation is radiation of food is the treatment of food with ionizing energy the reason we treat food with radiation is to destroy microorganisms that can cause disease like certain bacteria e.coli Salmonella also the industry agriculture could use it to destroy insects and prevent sprouting and in some cases also extend shelf life when you treat the irradiated food the food lasts longer because it changes the structure of the food because it changes the BAC kills the bacteria that may cause spoilage or does it do both when we treat food with radiation the energy passes through the food and hits all the molecules that are present in the food now microorganisms insects they have DNA and when radiant energy its DNA it damages it microorganisms are not able to multiply insects might be destroyed or sterilized it affects the DNA of the fruit itself but the fruit is not trying to multiply anymore but insects and microorganisms are not able to survive the stress of radiation and they die what about viruses like the hepatitis hepatitis A does that is that affected by this not as much as bacteria for viruses we need a much higher level of energy now where's this being used is it used throughout the world now and where in the United States is abused it's used worldwide well it's used in many is around the world in the u.s. we use it primarily for spices and herbs you might know that spices are very heavily contaminated often because they've dried out in the open and there's birds and animals that contaminate the food and radiation is very highly effective because you can radiate large container foods we also use it for food products I'd like to show you this is a ground beef package that has been treated with radiation and it has on it the radiation symbol a shovel right here is exactly right this isn't called a radula and it tells the consumer that the product has been treated with radiation and explains that the product has been treated to improve food safety now this will not affect the taste of the food absolutely not so they have done consumer tests and there is no difference between fruit that food that has been treated with radiation and not been treated with rady so there's no difference in the taste how about nutritional value vitamins minerals the fat content does any of that change when you do this as with any processing there might be some effects on nutritional value it depends on the nutrient and it also depends on the food so for example if you measure the vitamin C in broccoli that has been treated with radiation and not there's no difference at all actually broccoli is a very rich source of vitamin C but when we've done the same work with spinach in that case the vitamin C seems to be a little bit more sensitive to radiation regardless the reduction in vitamin C is far less than any other treatment any other processing that you would do to food okay so you do beef you do these are this is a package of mangoes from India that were imported into the US and the only way that they can be imported is if they are treated with radiation and so you can see again that has a symbol the raju resemble again letting consumers know that this product has been treated with 3d so in the United States what foods do we really we treat spices herbs ground beef we do a lot of pet treats because they are heavily contaminated with Salmonella and the concern is for safety of our pets but also for children who sometimes might feed the treats to the dogs and then put the fingers into the mouth and it seems to me the big right when I talk to my patients the big scare is they think they're going to get radiation from food that has been treated with radiation we can say unequivocally that you will not get any radiation from irradiated foods that's exactly right so when we take this orange and take it through a radiation chamber the energy goes through this orange just as the light goes through this orange but there's no more likely left after it has been treated so there's no radiation energy left in this fruit after it's been treated if we were to use a scintillator counter or a Geiger counter to measure radiation on the surface of this fruit it would be the same before and after fantastic so I guess you have food that's been radiated and not radiated here and I can taste them perhaps absolutely let me try and I'm going to guess which one has been treated this is a project fixture funded by the USDA the foreign agricultural service so these look the same day's great profession even oranges California you couldn't tell one from the other that tastes the consistency the sweetness the color is all absolutely the same are you able to tell the difference in acidity no I couldn't tell they I would think they came from the same exact food which one is which this is the control and this is the one that has been treated with radiation the dose we use is 400 gray which is the allowed dose to destroy insects in oranges we've done consumer work with these oranges and our consumers are not able to tell any difference between the tree today there's no way contend with this thank you very much I'm very informed we are now joined with dr. Prakash thanks for having me in the lab I really learned a lot the thing that I don't understand is the cost we know it's safe and we know it's effective but is cost to hold back for this technology cost is a factor right now we treat many products with radiation spices for example they're the largest volume of product and because of the volume cost has been reduced because of economies of scale for other products it can add a few cents per pound but as the volume of product that we treat increases the cost should go down as well now in the past years has been these outbreaks of e.coli which I imagine are very expensive can you comment on Ecola in particular yes recent e.coli outbreaks like the 2006 spinach outbreak killed a number of people it was a multi-state outbreak sickened hundreds of people this is of course the lives that are lost people that are sickened and also companies put out of business so it's a expensive in many ways you know in cost of human lives and then of course economy as well so really the industry if they look at it in the hope the whole picture is probably cost-effective I mean if you have one E coli outbreak that's the end of you that could be the end of your company and it might be really worthwhile to do this absolutely we sterilize instruments in the hospital I do lots of procedures and there's some of the things that we use over and over is this technology used for that in fact a lot of the facilities that treat food products also treat medical devices that might be a quite a significant fact amount of their business they treat bandages gauzes stents any medical device that gets put inside the body because this is a way to sterilize 100% these medical devices without the use of heat because he may be damaged it the the material but this does not damage the material the packages that you have here are quite interesting can you explain these to me yes these are on trays that are been treated by radiation for NASA so a number of the on trays that nASA uses for astronauts up in space have been treated with radiation to make sure that they're free of any disease-causing bacteria and any retail product that has been treated with radiation also has this radula symbol on it and the words treated by radiation so a consumer can tell when the product has been treated and what is the shelf life of this how long will this last this product has a shelf life as with all NASA entrees of three years at room temperature Wow and I imagine this is important to them so that probably tastes good huh yes NASA does extensive sensory testing of their products too because also astronauts lose their sense of taste up in space so they want to make sure the food tastes good and is nutritious so if it's safe for NASA safer less you

Channel: DrLarrySantora

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Rating: 4.2507935 out of 5

Keywords: Food Science, Chapman University, Anu Prakash, food, irradiation, ionizing energy, treat, bacteria, destroy, micro-organism, agriculture, industry, shelf life, spoil, DNA, radiation, United States, ground beef, radura, safety, taste, nutrition, broccoli, vitamin C, pet, salmonella, children, Geiger, counter, USDA, acidity, Spice, e-coli, spinach, 2006, outbreak, medical, device, NASA, yt:crop=16:9, herb, Health, Healthy, Natural, Cooking

Id: 2MJc_WNl7ME

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2013