the.com/irradiation
Zapping food with radiation so bacteria die and your leftovers don't.
means The process of exposing something, especially food, to radiation to kill bacteria, pests, or germs without cooking it.
from Built from Latin irradiare, 'to shine upon' or 'light up' — from in- ('on, into') plus radiare ('to emit rays, beam'), the same root that gives us 'radiant' and 'radius.' Originally the word just meant lighting something up with rays, often used poetically for sunlight or inspiration. Its grim modern specialization — bombarding food or materials with ionizing radiation to sterilize them — is a 20th-century development, riding on the same root but a very different kind of glow.
- no residual radioactivity
- food never becomes radioactive itself
- approved since
- FDA cleared spices and meat decades ago
- public perception
- sounds scarier than pasteurization, does the same job
- spud application
- stops potatoes from sprouting in storage