Food Irradiation Research Paper

If there is one thing that everyone loves to do, and needs to do, it’s eat. When people worry about what they are eating, they worry about how many calories are in their food, if there’s glucose in it, or something else along those lines, but what consumers generally think about when they eat is how much radiation has been pumped into their food prior. Yes that’s right, many foods that you eat are treated with different forms of radiation. Food irradiation is the process of treating food with ionizing radiation in order make it healthier to eat. There are many benefits to the irradiation of food and this fact should be recognized because it is a fairly new technology that should be further studied and used.
So what exactly is the process of …show more content…
The irradiation of food is thought of to be against organic processes and is generally avoided by those devoted to only eating organically. For example, my mother refuses to purchase milk that has been pasteurized through irradiation, which is really annoying because unpasteurized milk has that gross floating fat at the top and I have to remove it with a spoon before I drink it. But aside from that minor annoyance, the pasteurization of milk is done very carefully, right before the milk is put in the carton, so that there are no chance of contaminants. A study done by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association found that the main factor influencing satisfaction how test subjects viewed irradiation of food was how well informed they are on the topic before seeing it happen. This makes sense, because from a blind eye pumping gamma-rays and X-rays into the food we are eating could come off as absolutely crazy. Once informed of the reasoning behind the process, the test subjects generally all gave more approval for the process. But when it comes down to it, for some consumers, irradiation just seems unnatural, which is okay, because everyone is entitled to their own …show more content…
By irradiating food, we are able to preserve it, sterilize it, kill disease within it, and do many more great things. With any process that involves radiation, it is important to look at the risk/benefit factor of the process, which is evaluating whether the process is worth executing or not depending on the amount of benefit versus risk that is involved with the process. The amount of benefit we gain from the process is much larger than the risk, especially if proper safety and disposal precautions are taken. As human beings, we have to eat to stay alive, so why not make sure the food that we eat is as clean and safe as