A cheerful, optimistic scientist took me on a tour of his research lab, where he housed many lively chickens, all of whom seemed to be thriving on a diet of irradiated food.  They’d been eating it for about 2 years and were in good health and producing normal offspring.  I left the lab thinking that irradiated food—with almost no pathogens and a longer shelf life than untreated food—would be the wave of the future.  At that time, I was a student journalist at the University of Michigan (in Ann Arbor). The year was 1954.  Now, more than 50 years later, less than 1% of the food Americans eat is irradiated. Would we be better off if that percentage were higher?  If so, why are we shying away from this technology?  I asked our site’s Advisory Board scientists, as well as my computer, the answers to these and related questions. Their responses follow.

Food product dates encourage food waste—that’s what the creators of ShelfLifeAdvice.com hypothesized. To find out if they were right, they hired Harris Interactive to conduct a survey to test the theory.

More than 2,000 American adults responded to the following question about 10 food products: “To the best of your knowledge, which of the following refrigerated food products, if any, would be considered unsafe to consume once the date printed on the packaging has passed?”  The correct answer?  If properly handled, NONE of the products listed would cause illness if used shortly after the so-called “expiration” date.  Yet, 76% of respondents checked at least one.  Since most people don’t consume food they believe is unsafe to eat, the survey strongly suggests that most Americans throw out a lot of perfectly good food because the date on the package has passed, and they fear the product will make them sick.