Pasteurized milk and irradiated food

If you're reading this, you may ask "What does the pasteurization of milk and the irradiation of vegetables have to do with low-carb?". That's a fair question.

I think part of eating low-carb is understanding that there is a lot of misinformation out there about food and that our food supply has some fundamental flaws which we have covered up rather than fixing.

For those of you who don't know what irradiating food is about, check this out.

My wife recently brought my daughter to the pediatrician and asked the doctor what she thought about giving my daughter unpasteurized milk because we had found a local organic farm where we could buy it. I read about some of the benefits of drinking unpasteurized milk and I want what's best for my daughter.

The doctor's response to the idea of my daughter consuming unpasteurized milk was "absolutely not" and that it was "simply not an option" because of the possibility of illnesses that could be contracted from unpasteurized milk. While I think the doctor's concern is an overreaction, I will concede to her recommendations. I won't risk my daughter's life to prove a point about unpasteurized milk, but unpasteurized is the only kind of milk I'll drink.

The doctor's reaction got me thinking about all the cases of foodborne illness we've seen in the past years. Salmonella and E.coli has been found in all kinds of things from peanut butter, to tomatoes, and raw spinach. We obviously can't have any illusions about the safety of our food supply. Some of the healthiest foods we have access to are being contaminated with dangerous microorganisms.

Obviously raw cow's milk is not in and of itself dangerous to consume, it's the microorganisms that contaminate it that are what put us in danger. So instead of preventing contamination and encouraging safer collection practices from smaller more easily managed farms, we should cook the hell out of the milk we collect to make it more safe while destroying some of the beneficial components of milk.

I can tell that you're not buying what I'm selling. You're saying that pasteurized and unpasteurized milk can't be all that different. I won't bore you with tons of facts about what is and isn't in milk after you pasteurize it, mostly because I don't have those facts. The one fact I do have is that unpasteurized milk does have lactase, the enzyme needed for digesting lactose. Many people who are lactose intolerant (most of the world) can drink unpasteurized milk because of this difference. If lactase is destroyed in pasteurization, then what else is lost?

If unpasteurized milk is "not an option" because of concerns about foodborne illness, then what happens when the food supply becomes so consistently tainted that not eating irradiated food becomes "not an option" because you just can't risk eating some fresh fruits, vegetables, or meats that might be tainted with some sort of pathogen. Better yet, perhaps we should all eat only foods that are so highly processed that they no longer resemble the foods from which they came.

While the proponents of irradiating food suggest that there is no difference in the food before and after irradiation, then explain to me how the living tissue of the food being irradiated is not affected, but the dangerous microorganisms are completely destroyed.

What do you think?

Alex