Feeding studies of radiation sterilization ready to eat foods on sprague dawley rats: <i>In vivo</i>

Abstract

Development of gamma irradiated high moisture traditional dishes derived from locally traditional récipe aimed for specific target groups as ready to eat foods for ensuring the safety, quality, and security purposes have been conducted. The formation of free radicals in the traditional foods induced by ionizing radiation is a part of toxicological studies on irradiated traditional foods was to provide local scientific data base on safe- ty issues.The different foods such as steamed gold fish, spicy curry beef and soy sauces beef were individually vacuum packed in a laminate pouch of PET 12 μm/LDPE 2 μm/AL-Foil 7 μm/LDPE 2 μm/LLDPE 50 μm (PET/Al-Foil/ LLDPE), then kept at frozen state. The frozen samples were maintained in cryogenic condition along the irradiation process by placing the samples in styrofoam boxes filled with dry ice then irradiated with gamma rays at the dose of 45 kGy. The irradiated samples were kept and stored at normal temperature prior to test. Both irradiated conventional rat’s feed at normal temperature with the dose of 4 kGy and unirradiated one as control were also made. Irradiated and unirradiated samples were sent to animal laboratory, and fed into individual female Sprague Dawley rat as member of a group. The parameters observed were body weight changed of rats, toxicological test to observe the effect free radicals formation in rat’s blood by using malon-dialdehyde (MDA) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) methods, respectively, and anatomy pathology diagnosis. Different types of the foods sterilized by ionizing radiation fed ad libitum to the individual Sprague Dawley rat demonstrated that such foods did not give any adverse effect on the reduction of body weight, the toxicological impact, nor anatomy-pathology examinations of the rats.