Putting Food By - Janet Greene [10]
IRRADIATION
Technically, we should ignore the matter, because there is no chance that the North American householder will start treating his put-by food with little shots of gamma rays, or whatever. This is just a casual summing-up to date.
First, to clear up a language issue, something is treated with radiation, or it is treated by irradiation. Irradiation is known as a “cold process” because it does not increase temperature and therefore does not significantly alter the sensory characteristics of most foods. Thus an irradiated apple remains crisp and juicy. Radiation is “dose dependent.” Few foods are irradiated to the point where they are completely sterile. Rather, sufficient radiation is administered to eliminate a specific targeted pest, pathogen, or other spoilage factor. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has approved irradiation for eradicating insects from wheat, wheat flour, potatoes, spices, tea, vegetables, and fruits; for controlling trichinosis in pork; and for controlling Salmonella, E. coli, and other harmful bacteria in poultry and fresh and frozen meats. However, because irradiation facilities are expensive to build and because American consumers have been reluctant to accept irradiation, its use has been limited. Poultry and meat, for example, are rarely irradiated in the United States. All irradiated products must carry the international symbol called a radura, which resembles a stylized flower.
Irradiated food is not radioactive. The example given most often is that human beings are not rendered radioactive by a dentist’s X-ray machine.
Some forty nations use radiation in treating their food supplies.
SO WHAT’S A LITTLE BIT OF MOLD . . .
A mold is a fungus, and the fungi include mushrooms like truffles or the elegant morel, and yeasts, plus the specially cultured growths that trace blue veins in a noble Stilton cheese and or give us the means of producing streptomycin and penicillin. Surely these molds can’t be said to hurt you.
But then there are the fungi that embrace toadstools and mildew, and the mold on fruits and vegetables and grains and nuts and seeds, and on food too long in the refrigerator, and in foods improperly canned or sealed. Inhale spores from some of these molds and you can develop allergies or suffer injury to your bronchia and lungs. As they grow, some molds throw off poisons called mycotoxins (much like the way spores of Clostridium botulinum make the deadly toxin that causes botulism). Of the mycotoxins, the one with the most and worst publicity is aflatoxin. Aflatoxin occurs naturally on nuts and peanuts and corn and wheat and millet and rice and cottonseed among other things. Trace amounts of aflatoxin are common in many products, such as commercial peanut butter, and are tolerated by the human system. But high levels of aflatoxin can cause serious illness, including liver cancer. Fortunately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture monitor crops for aflatoxin and generally succeed in preventing foods or feeds with unacceptable levels of it from reaching the market. So aflatoxin is not a primary concern for home preservers except perhaps for those who put by dry grains.
Mold grows in warmish temperatures on foodstuffs exposed to moisture and oxygen. These are the reasons why grains must be stored dry and kept cool, and fresh vegetables and fruit must be kept cool, and canned food must be kept sealed after it has been processed (and processed correctly in the first place, to destroy mold spores in the food and in the containers). In addition to attacking plant materials, molds in a refrigerator will invade preserves and ham and cold cuts and dairy products and cake and bread; they just take longer to do so in cool storage.
PFB is especially harsh about molds because they can get into an apparently well-sealed jar