Re: irradiated vegetables

[Guest guest]

Deanna-

>Is irradiation widespread in conventional produce sold in the US? Is

>there a way to find out?

Food irradiation is legal in the US, but it's hard to find out how common

it is, and it doesn't seem that there's any consistent or required labeling

scheme.

Here's some out-of-date info from

http://www.organicconsumers.org/irrad/irradfaq.cfm#2 which may or may not

be of any use.

>>2. What is the status of food irradiation in the U.S. and abroad?top

>> Food irradiation is permitted in more than 40 countries. In the US,

>> it is approved for beef, pork, poultry, shell eggs, fruits, vegetables,

>> wheat, wheat flour, seeds for sprouting, herbs and spices. In August

>> 1999, a food industry coalition asked the FDA to also approve

>> irradiation for deli meats, frozen foods, prepared fresh foods, fresh

>> juices, seeds and sprouts. The FDA will almost certainly approve

>> irradiation for these foods. The FDA is currently considering a petition

>> for irradiation of crustaceans and molluscs (lobster, shrimp, oysters,

>> etc.) Foods not yet requested for irradiation are: dairy (which is

>> already pasteurized) and a few foods like honey and coffee. Bacon was

>> approved for irradiation in 1963. The approval was taken away in 1968

>> because animals fed irradiated bacon showed adverse health effects.

>> In the US, small amounts of meat, fruit and vegetables have been

>> test-marketed in the last 15 years.

>>

>>Although more than 200 billion lbs. of food are sold in the United

>>States, current capacity of all food irradiation firms combined would

>>irradiate only 1 billion lbs. of food. - Source: Ion Beam Applications,

>>quoted in Food Chemical News

>>November 5, 2001, p.10

Basically, if you stick to organic, you should be fine. If produce you're

looking at has stickers with standard PLU codes, you can actually tell even

if the food isn't explicitly labeled. Conventional produce has a

four-digit PLU code. Organic produce has a five-digit code always starting

with the number 9. The trick is that genetically engineered food ALSO has

a five-digit code, but it starts with an 8. So (and this is the standard

example) a conventional banana would have the PLU code 4011, while an

organic banana would have 94011 and a GM banana would have

84011. Unfortunately not all stores use standard PLU codes, but it can

still be pretty useful.

-

[Guest guest]

>Basically, if you stick to organic, you should be fine. If produce you're

>looking at has stickers with standard PLU codes, you can actually tell even

>if the food isn't explicitly labeled. Conventional produce has a

>four-digit PLU code. Organic produce has a five-digit code always starting

>with the number 9. The trick is that genetically engineered food ALSO has

>a five-digit code, but it starts with an 8. So (and this is the standard

>example) a conventional banana would have the PLU code 4011, while an

>organic banana would have 94011 and a GM banana would have

>84011. Unfortunately not all stores use standard PLU codes, but it can

>still be pretty useful.

>

>

>

>-

>

Thanks . I was aware of the coding, but I bet many others are not,

so it is brilliant that you have covered that thoroughly. One store I

frequent actually prefers customers to weigh and price all produce, so

the codes are all right there, nice and handy.

It is frustrating though. I love eggplant, can't grow it well (at least

in the past), and can never find organic. I just hope that when I buy

it, it hasn't been zapped. I sure would like to know what the hell I am

buying. I have no CSAs nearby. The farmers markets are good, and I

doubt they would engage in irradiation, probably just the major

grocers. It's like the only way to be sure is to see if it spoils.

Isn't that helpful?

Deanna, who will be hitting y'all up for eggplant gardening tips this spring

[Guest guest]

At 04:04 PM 1/20/05 -0600, you wrote:

>Deanna, who will be hitting y'all up for eggplant gardening tips this spring

Oh, please. Eggplant is something I can't stand, grew it for Ex-Boy

because he loved it, never tended it, but ended up with way too much

anyway, even for Ex-Boy's tastes.

Deanna, all you have to do is be disgustingly nice to me, I'll pop in a few

plants and ship all the *$%$@#( & * things to ye.

MFJ

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or

kings - stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once

again. ~Greg Bear

[Guest guest]

--

> Conventional produce has a

> four-digit PLU code. Organic produce has a five-digit code always starting

> with the number 9. The trick is that genetically engineered food ALSO has

> a five-digit code, but it starts with an 8. So (and this is the standard

> example) a conventional banana would have the PLU code 4011, while an

> organic banana would have 94011 and a GM banana would have

> 84011. Unfortunately not all stores use standard PLU codes, but it can

> still be pretty useful.

Is irradiation the same as genetic engineering?

Would an irradiated but not genetically engineered product have a PLU code

prefixed with

8?

-Pratick

__________________________________________________

[Guest guest]

>Deanna, all you have to do is be disgustingly nice to me, I'll pop in a few

>plants and ship all the *$%$@#( & * things to ye.

>

>

>

>

>

>MFJ

>Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or

>kings - stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once

>again. ~Greg Bear

>

Oh, dearest , how lovely to read your flowing iterations. My, but

you always have such helpful things to say. And how are darling kitties

(it is plural isn't it?)? My Diablo got his one black ball and his one

white ball snippied at the vet today. Sure I will be disgustingly nice

to the Goddessness of the Garden! Whatever it takes to get some

delicious eggplant, which no one else in my family goes for either, btw.

Your humble slave until harvest,

Deanna

[Guest guest]

Pratick-

>Is irradiation the same as genetic engineering?

No, not at all.

Irradiation is a means of food preservation. You take some food and expose

it to radiation, the idea being to kill all organisms in the food that

might cause it to spoil, allowing it to be stored for longer and with

reduced care. In reality, one of the main motivations for irradiating

food, besides the obvious potential cost savings from reduced spoilage,

refrigeration and so on, is that producers wouldn't have to be so careful

of bacterial contamination anymore, and what that really boils down to is

fecal contamination. In other words, producers and processors don't want

to spend money on clean, well-monitored meat-processing plants. They'd

rather save some money but still be able to sell the meat by irradiating it

so that people won't get sick from e. coli and other such organisms.

I found a slightly more current article, from 2002, I think.

http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/whatsgoingon/nuking.html

Here's an excerpt.

>Conventional food irradiation uses cobalt 60 and cesium 137 – both nuclear

>waste byproducts – to generate high energy gamma rays. In a typical

>facility a human operator moves aluminum food racks into a chamber with

>six foot thick walls and then exposes the target to a rack of “pencils”

>lifted out of a water pool. The inherent dangers of such a process should

>be patently obvious. To give but one example, in 1988 Radiation

>Sterilizers Inc. (RSI) in Dekalb, GA received a shipment of 252 “hand me

>down” cesium 137 canisters from the U.S. Dept of Energy (DOE) for

>irradiation of spices. Within two years one of the canisters was leaking

>into the storage pool, workers were exposed – tracking radioactive water

>into their own cars and homes - and by 1992 the facility was so

>contaminated it had to be abandoned, leaving taxpayers with a $47 million

>clean-up bill.

>

>A more recent food irradiation tactic uses an “e beam” from a particle

>accelerator, but this only penetrates food up to an inch and a half, and

>larger/thicker food items (like steak) often require extra – and more

>expensive – x-rays. Titan Corp, which came up with the “e beam” idea from

>its ongoing Star Wars research, receives a whopping 80% of its revenue

>from U.S. taxpayers through DOE and the Pentagon. Like many public

>schools, the University of Wisconsin is currently conducting Star Wars

>research involving creation of hypernetic DNA-based computers, holds

>$53,000 worth of Titan stock in its Trust Fund (www.uwsa.edu/tfunds), and

>is most likely serving irradiated food to students, staff, and faculty

>through its various corporate-supplied cafeterias. It remains questionable

>whether any of these related activities actually fulfill the university’s

>founding mandate to “improve the human condition.”

>

>The number of microbes that are killed by a radiation dose depends

>entirely upon the time and length of exposure – with 100% mortality rarely

>achieved. Irradiation – like chlorine - does not necessarily destroy

>spores, cysts, viruses, prions or other naturally resistant pathogens. It

>also does not physically remove the manure, urine, pus, vomit, toxins,

>tumors, and other waste on food - nor can it prevent future contamination

>from dirty utensils, cutting surfaces, unwashed hands, etc. Of course, the

>“collateral damage” to “nontarget organisms” is already painfully apparent

>– as witnessed by the health impact on government workers in DC forced to

>handle irradiated mail in the wake of the post 9/11 anthrax attacks. Media

>reports indicate that over 100 U.S. Postal Service employees and over 250

>Congressional and Executive Branch staffers have suffered a wide variety

>of irradiation symptoms – from bloody noses and chronic headaches to skin

>lesions and tingling sensations.

>

>Unlike normal cooking, when food is nuked numerous chemical bonds are

>ruptured, leaving behind a trail of free radicals, ions, and other

>radiolytic byproducts. Some of these compounds are already known to be

>dangerous to human health when ingested - such as formaldehyde, octane,

>formic acid, butane, methyl propane, and benzene. Others are only

>identified as “unique radiolytic products” (URPs) – cyclobutanones such as

>2-DCB being an example – and these are not found naturally anywhere on

>earth except in irradiated foodstuffs. There has been no federal safety

>testing and little scientific investigation of URPs. They are known to

>persist for up to a decade in food, and some experts fear that is long

>enough to trigger cancers and birth defects.

It does turn out that irradiated whole foods sold in the US have to be

labeled, but if you didn't already know, you'd never guess from the label

itself what it means, because it's just an innocuous-looking symbol. VERY

misleading.

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Image%20Directory/radura.gif

And manufacturers don't even have to display that piddling little symbol on

prepared foods which include irradiated ingredients.

Though irradiation does damage and alter the DNA structure of food, it

happens in a relatively random way; genetic engineering is something else

entirely. It's the intentional, controlled modification of an organism's

genetic code. A company might splice the gene for producing a certain

protein from a particular species of fish into the genetic code of a

tomato, or they might knock out a particular gene from a batch of mice.

>Would an irradiated but not genetically engineered product have a PLU code

>prefixed with

>8?

Nope -- unless it was also genetically modified.

-

[Guest guest]

Deanna-

>The farmers markets are good, and I

>doubt they would engage in irradiation, probably just the major

>grocers. It's like the only way to be sure is to see if it spoils.

>Isn't that helpful?

I guess I could be surprised, but I really doubt any produce at farmers'

markets is irradiated. The produce is, presumably, coming directly from

the farm to the market, so it's not being stored for a long time,

transported over long distances or passing through the hands of

middlemen. There just wouldn't be any incentive or financial justification

for it unless, I suppose, a farmer was producing food of such abominable

quality that it rotted practically the moment it left the plant, but then

it would be coming off the plant (or out of the ground) in visibly awful

shape anyway, so I just don't think you have to worry about market

produce. Besides, you can usually ask the farm employees working the stand.

-

[Guest guest]

>I guess I could be surprised, but I really doubt any produce at farmers'

>markets is irradiated. The produce is, presumably, coming directly from

>the farm to the market, so it's not being stored for a long time,

>transported over long distances or passing through the hands of

>middlemen. There just wouldn't be any incentive or financial justification

>for it unless, I suppose, a farmer was producing food of such abominable

>quality that it rotted practically the moment it left the plant, but then

>it would be coming off the plant (or out of the ground) in visibly awful

>shape anyway, so I just don't think you have to worry about market

>produce. Besides, you can usually ask the farm employees working the stand.

>

>

>

>

>-

>

Yes, I think you are quite correct from a common sense standpoint. It's

a small market and some of the produce can look shabby at times,

especially in the midst of a blazing hot summer. They do post where

different items come from too.

Deanna, in growing zone 7

[Guest guest]

Deanna wrote:

Deanna:

I have 2 pumpkins I harvested and they are just fine too.

The difference has to do with how they are stored: if they

don't get wet and have no blemishes, they can be fine. And

doing stuff like spraying them with vinegar or baking soda

might help (works on cheese, haven't tried it with pumpkins).

These ones I have I put on cedar chips, and they are doing fine.

So, they may or may not be irradiated. Pumpkins CAN keep all winter,

that's why they are called " Winter squash "

-- Heidi Jean

> And here it is January and these puppies are not moldy or

> mushy at all. IME with big pumpkins, they usually don't last like sugar

> pie pumpkins or other winter squash. In previous years I have had them

> go mushy by December. So it made me wonder if they were irradiated.

>

> Thanks for any tips.

>

> Deanna

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

" Doing stuff like spraying them with vinegar or baking

soda

might help (works on cheese, haven't tried it with

pumpkins) " .------

I have a question?

Can cottage cheese be sprayed with vinegar in order to

store it for a longer duration?

Thanks

alka

__________________________________________________

[Guest guest]

Alka Gaur wrote:

> I have a question?

>

> Can cottage cheese be sprayed with vinegar in order to

> store it for a longer duration?

>

> Thanks

>

> alka

I would guess it would ferment internally, since it has so much

moisture. Many other cheeses are very dry, so only the surface has

issues. Goat cheese is moist, and it ferments if you keep it too long in

the freezer, which makes it taste " interesting " . I would guess in the

old days they fermented cottage cheese too ... I wonder what would

happen if you stirred some kefir into it and let it sit. But maybe you

could freeze it .. goat cheese freezes just fine, I'd bet cottage cheese

would too.

-- Heidi Jean

>

[Guest guest]

I have frozen raw milk cottage cheese and subsequently thawed it in the

refrigerator. It was just fine. --- Carol

Heidi <heidis@...> wrote:But maybe you could freeze it .. goat

cheese freezes just fine, I'd bet cottage cheese would too.

-- Heidi Jean