What is Safe Food ?
Ancient rulers and kings determined food safety by using a food tester.
The judgment
Was easy: if the tester lived, then the food was proclaimed 'fit victuals'
Who decides What is Safe Food nowadays?
As food tasters no longer find steady employment, we may assume that eating may be less risk now than in the days of Lucretia Borga, when adding poison to food was commonly practiced to murder political enemies.
Although we currently face little risk of being purposefully poisoned through our food , as in Renaissance Italy, some people fear that we may be poisoned inadvertently by chemicals in the food whose harmful effects have yet to be discovered.
Unlike the royal food testers of the past , toxicologists today are primarily concerted with chronic rather than acute exposure to poisons.
The tasters have been replaced by scientists from the FDA, academia, and industry. All three are armed with sophisticated analytical equipment capable of identifying the presence of a poison or as toxicant at the level of parts per million, parts per billion, or even parts per trillion .
In most cases, our ability to grasp the meaning of their presence.
Frequently, we are left wondering whether the 1538 dictum of Paracelsus that only the dose makes the poison 'still applies.
Although there is no scientific dispute that this dictum does apply to classic toxic responses, many consumers and journalists fail to understand the concept.
As a case n point , a network television program focusing on safety and quality of food in the United States included a report on the modern broiler industry.
On the modern broiler industry. The report accurately stated that arsenic was added to the rations of commercially produced chickens.
However, the report failed to state that arsenic at low levels is an essential nutrient for chickens.
For poultry and many other species, including humans, too little arsenic is just as noxious as too much .
Arsenic, like other trace elements , is a clear –cut example of a case in which only the dose makes the poison .
However , most consumers recognize arsenic only as poison, so they infer that poisons are being added to rations of commercially raised chickens.
While this controversy is fairley easy to quell with facts , another debate brews about whether the dictum of Paracelsus can be applied in all circumstances, particularly with respect to carcinogens.
For some carcinogens , a clear dose response can be demonstrated, while for others it cannot. In the latter case, it is feared that a single molecule has the potential to initiate or promote a cancer growth.
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