James Silverton wrote:
>
> Do people seriously believe that nuclear particles persist in foods
> after irradiation? If not, I wonder what they are afraid of? Having seen

"Nuclear particles" was never the concern. The concern
is free radicals, which are produced by the random breaking
of chemical bonds in the food by radiation. Free radicals
are highly reactive molecular fragments implicated in
inflammation, aging, carcinogenesis, etc.

> some of the side effects of folk medicine, I'm distinctly suspicious of
> that too. That's not to say there are not useful natural products but I
> remember an Amazon tribe with one of the world's highest incidences of
> stomach cancer caused by a quite effective throat gargle.

"Natural" does not mean "safe", and it never has.