back to Organic Consumers Assn. Food Irradiation page

September 4, 2000

For small children:

What's wrong with irradiation?

• Irradiated foods look fresh, but they've really been processed. When you go to a doctor to get an x-ray it is to help you get better. But a piece of fruit might have been exposed to 1 million x-rays. Zap! The force of the energy is so powerful that the inside of the food is messed up. You can't see it, but some of the cells are broken--just like when you get a bruise on your knee, you can see the blood under the skin from the broken veins. The fruit looks OK but inside some of the vitamins and the enzymes are smashed.
• Irradiated food deceives you. You don't know what you are buying. It looks real but it has changed. People should be able to know if someone has changed their food. Even adults can't tell by looking at the food, and the people who are selling irradiated food don't want to tell you that it's been irradiated.
• Irradiation allows people to store food for a long time. Like keeping strawberries outside the refrigerator for 2 weeks. That sounds neat to look at but do you really want to eat them? Sometimes these irradiated fruits never ripen, and stay hard as a rock for months and months.
• Just because some adults want to sell irradiated foods doesn't mean they're a good thing. People sell cigarettes too and some people buy them.