Food Irradiation

INTRODUCTION:

Exposing food to irradiation is equal to about 30-milion chest X-rays. Food irradiation is the process of exposing food with a certain amount of ionizing radiation. This process started to be used widely in 1986 when the FDA has given the green light to expose nearly our entire food to ionizing irradiation. The purpose of this report is to illustrate food preservation methods, the history of food irradiation, the causes of the use of food irradiation, and the negative impacts of irradiation with the proper solutions to mitigate them.

I. TWO METHODS OF FOOD PRESERVATION: COLD PRESERVATION AND HEAT PRESERVATION Due to the huge amount of harmful bacteria, which can affect food, it has become very necessary to find effective ways to keep the food safe. There are to major methods for preserving the food, which are cold reservation and heat reservation.

A- Cold Preservation:

Cold reservation includes two primary types of preserving the food that are: freezing and refrigeration, and irradiation or cold preservation. Firstly, freezing and refrigeration is the most usable and popular method of food preservation. That is because two main reasons. First one, they do not change the flavor of the food. Moreover, meats and vegetables can be effectively freezed without any change in there texture. The main concept behind this method is to slow down or stop completely the bacterial action. Secondly, food irradiation or called patronization which is using the ionizing radiation to kill mostly all of the bacteria that contaminate the food. The advantages of cold pasteurization method are “it does not significantly change the tats the food and it does not cause a reduction in the nutrient content” (Green, p2).

B-heat preservation:

Heat preservation includes also two major categories, which are canning and pasteurization. Firstly, people have been using canning as a way