Why irradiated foods are harmful
What is irradiation?
Irradiation consists of bombardment of the food with gamma or other types of radiation. It is usually at levels sufficiently intense to kill bacteria. After irradiation, the foods cannot contain any bacteria that could make the consumer ill, e.g. live e.coli bacteria.
Many foods are irradiated, e.g. it is routine now for some meat. Since the meat is to be irradiated, no longer is care required to avoid fecal matter from the animal`s intestines contaminating the meat. Any harmful bacteria are killed and so rendered harmless.
Water draining from a field where animals live can cause contamination by animal feces of crops such as lettuce or spinach in adjacent fields. Some lettuce and spinach in the US is now irradiated.
Irradiation brings cost savings and longer shelf life for the food, which could result in lower prices for the consumer, and/or higher profits for the producer. It protects the consumer from harmful bacteria. It protects the manufacturer from being sued by consumers who have been made ill by harmful bacteria in the food.
But those benefits come at a terrible price.
How is irradiation harmful?
It produces radiolytic products that can be harmful, e.g. carcinogenic.
Note that irradiation does not produce radioactive products. That would probably be even worse.
It destroys nutrients.
- Not only does the irradiation itself destroy nutrients, but the longer shelf life means that the distributor can hold the foods in stock for a longer time, thus saving on cost. But that gives time for further depletion of nutrients.
In the case of the irradiated lettuce, the taste is reportedly awful, but I am not in the US and so have never tasted it.
Of course, if food is produced under clean conditions, irradiation is unnecessary.
In the case of E.coli, that comes only from animals, e.g. drainage from a field of cattle into a field of lettuce.
There is no requirement for irradiated foods to be labelled as such.