Can Nuking Your Food Make It Safer To Eat?

Sayer Ji, Contributor
Activist Post

There is a profound misunderstanding in the mass market today about the value of certified organic food. The question is not whether the 40% or more you pay at the register for an organic product is really worth the added vitamin, mineral and phytonutrient content you receive.



The use of euphemisms like “food additive” and “pasteurization” to describe the process of blasting food with inordinately high levels of gamma-radiation can not obviate the fact that the very same death-rays generated by thermonuclear warfare to destroy life are now being applied to food to “make it safer.” This sort of Orwellian logic, e.g. WAR is PEACE, is the bread and butter of State-sponsored industry propaganda.

This is not a hypochondriac’s ranting, as we aren’t talking here about small amounts of radiation. The level of gamma-radiation used starts at 1 KiloGray (equivalent to 16,700,000 chest x-rays or 333 times a human lethal dose) and goes all the way up to 30 KiloGray (500,000,000 chest x-rays or 10,000 times a human lethal dose). The following table is a list of foods that are increasingly being “nuked” for your protection.

When you buy conventional food, there is little assurance that it has not been irradiated. Although labeling requirements specify that irradiated food sold in stores should have the international symbol – the Radura – affixed to it, oversight is particularly poor in this regard, and restaurant food and processed food containing irradiated ingredients are not legally required to be labeled as such.

Labeled, or not, irradiated food is exposed to the same ionizing gamma-radiation that destroyed life in Hiroshima, Chernobyl and Fukushima. “Primitive” life forms like microbes refuse to ingest irradiated food (which is why we use it), but humans are gullible enough to believe industry pundits and governmental “authorities” like the USDA and FDA, who say doses of radiation applied to your food up to and quite close to a billion chest x-rays worth of ionizing radiation is safe for human consumption.

Despite the irresponsible promotion of this process as safe, food irradiation destroys much of the vitamin content of food, produces a number of toxic byproducts: formaldehyde, benzene, and formic acid, as well as unique radiolytic products, e.g. 2-alklycyclobutanoes, that have been demonstrated to be cytotoxic (damages cells), genotoxic (damages DNA), and carcinogenic (causes cancer) in test tube and animal studies. (View peer-reviewed research on gamma Iirradiation here). How is it that a process that is so obviously detrimental to human health is allowed? There are at least three reasons driving this dangerous process:

  • Food Politicization: Finally, the military-industrial complex requires that the public perceive nuclear energy as not just an element of war, or potential ecological disaster, but as something “beneficial” that may protect us from harm. Nuclear waste, once the irrepressible hobgoblin of the nuclear energy industry, is suddenly transformed – under the guidance and support of our government – into both a profitable commodity and a “therapeutic” agent.

In the same way that irradiating bacteria contaminated food does nothing to remove the unsanitary processes that cause the underlying problem, in 2006, the FDA passed, without any public review or oversight, the use of bacteriphage virus “cocktails” to be sprayed on meat, in an attempt to prevent Listeria monocytogenes outbreaks. These bacteria-specific viruses, in theory, lay dormant waiting for virulent and antibiotic-resistant bacteria upon which they prey.

Although the FDA only approves the use of lysic bacteriphages which are not believed to alter the DNA of the cells they infect, the possibility of contamination with lysogenic strains which can alter DNA is significant, owing to the fact that these viruses are only between 20 and 200 millionth of a millimeter in size. The FDA’s decision to define bacteriophages as “Generally Recognized As Safe” (GRAS) food additives is premature, and therefore a red flag to those who are concerned about the underlying food safety issues that are not being addressed.

With the country still reeling from the implosion of the financial markets, new attention has been placed on the huge trade deficits the US has with its trading partners. One major factor in our increasingly disadvantaged global trading position is our decision to use genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), despite growing concern over its short and long term adverse effects on the health of the human body and the environment. For example in 2006 “the most significant event in the history of the U.S. rice industry” occurred, according to David Coia of the USA Rice Federation trade group, when trace amounts of genetically modified rice was found commingled in the U.S. rice supply.


America is one of the only countries in the world which does not require GMO ingredients or foods to be labeled as such. We can’t expect the rest of the world to so carelessly experiment on its population with foods that have been profoundly altered to contain potentially toxic gene products from other species, as well as contamination with highly toxic agrichemicals such as Roundup, or similar glyphosate-based formulations.


Food quality has become an oxymoron in this country. With the state-sponsored promotion of food irradiation, virus-laden food additives, genetic modification, pesticide usage and raw sewage fertilizer, Americans who don’t go out of their way to buy only organic food, are unknowing participants in the largest food experiment ever performed in recorded history.

Not too long ago, all cultures considered food sacred for its ability to sustain our physical, emotional and spiritual well being from the ground up. Today, the forces of commodification and naked, unbridled “free market” capitalism have converted food into devitalized metabolic poisons, which slowly render those who consume them into commodities themselves, i.e. sickened patients, against whom are plied the thousands of branded ‘snake-oil’ potions conjured up by the conventional medical establishment’s cauldron-like pharmacopeia.

Remember, next time you shop, know that buying organic isn’t just about it being more nutritious than conventional food; rather, it provides the only assurance that can still shield you from the veritable minefield of potential health liabilities which is lurking within every supermarket across the land.

1, Food Irradiation: What You Need To Know


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