Will irradiation make food radioactive? No. Much as we The Why Files comedians might wish to crack jokes about food that glows, we can't. Irradiation doesn't make food radioactive.

So what does happen to food when it's irradiated? Much of the early concern focused on "unique radiolytic products," which we'll call URPs. Translated, these are chemicals produced when food is irradiated that are not made when food is frozen, canned, boiled, steamed, fried, barbecued, microwaved or just cooling on the plate while Dad drones endlessly about the stock market before dinner.

As far as The Why Files can determine, there aren't any significant URPs, and about the only reliable irradiation problem is destroying a small percentage of some B vitamins in meat. That drawback was not enough to prevent the process from being approved by dozens of major scientific and public health organizations that are intrigued by the possibility of reducing foodborne diseases. This list includes the Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association.

In the face of such approval, especially given the mounting problem of food poisoning, why aren't more people clamoring for more irradiated food? ("Mom, why can't we buy nuke burgers this week?")

Some people attribute the deafening silence to a lack of advertising by food processors. But Grace Masefield, speaking for Isomedix, whose suit forced the Food and Drug Administration to issue its irradiation ruling, attributes the disjunction to the frightening connotations of "irradiation."

Masefield says researchers find much greater acceptance after consumers hear information about how safe the process really is. She argues that the highly publicized cases of food poisoning have produced "a big move in the consumer sector. They really want to have a choice as far as what they can buy. Consumers are becoming aware of needless food poisoning."

Yet while Isomedix worries about choice, it also favors making the irradiation notice on packages harder to see. Masefield argues that while irradiation is safe, "radiation" sounds so ominous. "Radiation is not user-friendly, it connotes bad symbols and signs, it's associated with nuclear accidents in the past." (In fact, Isomedix would prefer to dump the term entirely and substitute the euphemism "cold pasteurization.")

Noting that chemical additives can be listed in fine print on a package, she argues that irradiation should be treated similarly, without the blocky flower symbol that's now used to mark irradiated food.

That idea doesn't sound so tasty to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based public-interest group. "We oppose it," says Elizabeth Dahl, staff attorney in the group's food safety program. "This is a way to make it more difficult for the consumer to find out" if food has been irradiated. Noting a 1996 poll showing that 92 percent of Americans wanted to know whether their food had been irradiated, even after being told that irradiation could have some benefits, Dahl says the labeling issue is "a simple matter" of the consumers' right to know what they are eating."

What, me worry?
From the sound of it, food irradiation must be a cure-all: Just zap the food to kill every last pathogen -- even down to the trichinosis worms in pork (but the prions that supposedly cause mad cow disease are remarkably resistant to radiation). Will irradiation allow producers to drop the sanitation measures that have made our food supply relatively safe?

Experts and regulators say it won't. "Food irradiation does not replace proper food handling," says the American Dietetic Association, which approves of the process. Foods processed by irradiation, the group says, should be handled under "the same food safety precautions as all other foods."

Yet some critics warn about exactly this response. Michael Jacobson, executive director of Center for Science in the Public Interest, calls food irradiation "a high-tech end-of-the-line solution to contamination problems that can and should be addressed earlier. Consumers prefer to have no filth on meat than to have filth sterilized by irradiation."

While Jacobson admits that food irradiation may be safe to consumers, he argues that it's expensive, and suggests that many less drastic measures -- such as steam pasteurization -- should be used first in the battle against food-borne diseases.