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16: Food Safety

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    55525

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    Everything is poison.

    Only the dose makes a thing not a poison.

    Paracelsus (1493-1541)

    Wash your hands!

    Mom

    When we look for hazards in food, we find them everywhere. Some toxins are even a natural part of vegetables, some we add to food, and some come into being as food spoils or is cooked. One could even argue that calories are a food hazard—eating too many causes obesity.

    We rely on our senses to avoid some hazards (e.g., spoiled food), but even taste can deceive. In drinking water, iron is safe but tastes bad, whereas lead is toxic and tasteless. Even if we could easily spot toxins, we can’t avoid them all. They are pervasive in our food supply—most of them natural, and most of them in tiny amounts. Keep in mind that the most toxic substance is safe if the amount is small enough, and the least toxic substance is dangerous if the amount is large enough. The dose makes the poison.

    This page titled 16: Food Safety is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Judi S. Morrill via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.

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      Judi S. Morrill
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