Rabbi Lerner’s note: I have no way of assessing the accuracy of this article by Sheila Parks. But on the off chance that it is accurate, it seems important enough for the well-being of our community of caring people for me to risk putting up on my web site something that might turn out to be wildly exaggerated. It deserves scientific attention, and it won’t get that from the food industry which tends to place much higher focus on profit than on health.
Fukushima, Miso Soup and Me by Sheila Parks
BACKSTORY
We can never be too careful when it comes to feeding ourselves and our families. There are no safe foods any longer. Only safer foods.
One of the personal, hardest things I did right after the Fukushima Diachii nuclear power plant tragedy and disaster, on March 11, 2011, was to give up my beloved miso soup. I had been eating miso soup daily for many decades. And I thought to myself, I am probably never going to be able to eat it again. And for me, now, three-plus years later, that remains true.
More recently because of my getting very involved in Fukushima and the issue of radiation from it, because of my interest in eating healthy food for the last 40 years and because I believe I am what I eat, I began researching the food that I had been eating and was eating. Was it radioactive? Where did it come from? I knew that I did not knowingly want to eat any food from Japan. And I knew that I wanted to tell others about food that could be radioactive due to Fukushima, just as I had been telling them for decades about vegetarianism, veganism, the importance of eating only organic, not eating GMO’s, that we are what we eat, and on and on.
Because miso soup is included in almost all, if not all, of the lists of what is good to eat to combat and detox from radiation, I decided to start my own miso soup investigation.
Miso soup is often eaten by health-conscious people, and I am a very health-conscious person. I have been an organic vegetarian for 40 years or so – no fish, fowl, meat — and in and out of veganism. I made this change in my life for health, spiritual, ethical, and sustainability reasons. Forty years ago, it was neither fashionable nor trendy, but rather, on the fringes. It was a very easy move for me and I never wanted to go back. I still find being a vegan hard because I like cheese, yogurt, kefir and eggs a lot, but when Fukushima happened, so many of the health-food people said to go vegan that I did – again. Now, since Fukushima, and all the “to eat” lists that miso soup is on, it appears that many more people are thinking about eating miso, talking about eating miso or are already eating it anew.
Because miso is known for its healing properties in general, as well as its healing of radiation sickness, as a detox for radiation, and perhaps even healing and/or preventing cancer, it is often – if not always – listed as something to eat now to heal from the radiation from Fukushima that we might have been or are currently exposed to. A scholarly article and experiment about miso by Hiromitsu Watanabe in 2013 on the healing aspects of miso is often quoted. Given all this current emphasis on eating miso, I felt compelled to do further research to confirm my understanding that miso does indeed come from Japan, before I began to suggest to others that they reconsider eating miso after Fukushima.
I do not write this paper to denounce miso nor to decry its efficacy. I ate miso soup consciously and intentionally for decades and I miss it a lot. I write this paper to question how safe it is to eat it today, after Fukushima, how safe it is to eat anything that comes from Japan now — no matter how small the amount and no matter how safe it supposedly is. How do we know whether or not to trust those who do the measurements and tell us it is all right to eat foods from Japan?
I also write this paper because I think it is crucial that we all stay as healthy as we possibly can, given all the radiation and contamination from Fukushima, Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the state of Washington, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), in New Mexico, and all the other nuclear power plants in the world. In 2011, APreported from an investigation they did that “Radioactive leaks [were] found at 75% of US nuclear sites.” I think it is crucial that we mitigate what is happening to our planet and to us because of Fukushima. We need all the information we can get. I am not an “either/or,” but rather a “both/and” woman. That means, to borrow from Dorothy Day, I like to do both: not only stop the speeding train, i.e., act to shut down all nuclear power plants now, to advocate for change to solar, wind, geo-thermals and to work to get an international team in charge of Fukushima; but also and simultaneously to strive to help the survivors of that speeding train, and that means all of us, and especially, of course, all the children of the world. And part of this mitigation means we have to take care of ourselves. Like in an airplane when the oxygen masks come down, the adult has to put theirs on first, before putting the child’s on — or both adult and child can die. To mitigate the situation now, right now, for every human being and animal on the planet as best we can, leads me to miso soup.
JAPANESE FARMERS SPEAK OUT ABOUT CONTAMINATED FOOD IN JAPAN
My instinct not to eat food that comes from Japan was very strongly confirmed when I watched a June 6, 2013 video and read the accompanying text under it: “Fukushima Farmers vs Japanese Government: ‘Our Farmland Has Been Seriously Contaminated!'” in which farmers talk about food they are growing and selling after Fukushima. It gives one of the most honest and forthright assessments of the situation that I have seen. And it is first-hand experience from the farmers. It is the “38th National Action Day of Environmental Pollution Victims: Negotiations with TEPCO/Japanese Government.” One of the farmers says, “I know there is contamination in what we grow. I feel guilty about growing and selling them to consumers”.We are not removing the contamination.” I don’t see how the situation can have gotten any better. Only worse.
HOW MUCH RADIATION IS IT LEGAL TO EAT, IN JAPAN AND THE USA?
John LaForge, co-director of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog and environmental justice group in Wisconsin , tells us, “Japan has decided that fish contaminated with fewer than 100 Becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) of cesium-137 is good enough to eat. Some local officials have set a stricter bar of 50 Bq/kg.”
LaForge continues, “In the U.S. the permissible level of cesium in food is 1,200 Bq/kg. Canada allows 1,000 Bq/kg. The difference is startling. The huge discrepancy allows importation by the U.S. and Canada of what Japan considers highly contaminated fish, vegetables and meat. Rice, fish, beef and other Japanese exports poisoned by nuclear power’s single worst nightmare is doubtless being consumed in the United States.” It is unconscionable that the USA and Canada have set their bars for the permissible level of Cesium or other radionuclides in food to be so much higher than Japan’s limits. For me, there is never any permissible level for any country to allow radionuclides in our food. Some noted nuclear scientists quoted by Beyond Nuclear say that “There is No Safe Dose of Ionizing Radiation.” I agree. My article about the Pacific Ocean and my suggestion about food from the ocean may also be useful in this regard.