Rikkitic:

 

Just wondering: If you happened to have some seriously spoilt food, whether meat or veg or anything else, could you make it safe to eat again by thoroughly zapping it with radiation sufficient to kill any bugs? Would doing this destroy any remaining nutritional value of the food? Is the dangerous part of bad food the living microbes or chemical changes brought about by microbe metabolism that would kill you even if the microbes were destroyed?

 

You can kill any bugs by cooking the food.

But some bugs make toxins that can kill you or make you very ill. The botulinum toxin can kill you. But you can inactivate it by heating.

"Inactivation of botulinum toxins was determined in selected acid and low acid foods and buffer systems. Heating at 74°C and 79°C gave a biphasic curve when the log of the inactivation of the toxins was plotted against the time of heating. At 74°C, the time for inactivation of 103 LD50 of type A toxin per gram of an acid food such as tomato soup to no detectable toxin by mouse assay was an hr. or more. At 85°C the inactivation was very rapid and approached exponential decrease with inactivation to no detectable toxin within 5 min. In general, the toxins were more stable in acid foods such as tomato soup at pH 4.2 than in low acid foods, such as canned corn at pH 6.2. Twenty minutes at 79°C or 5 min at 85°C is recommended as the minimum heat treatment for inactivation of 103 LD50 botulinum toxins per gram of the foods tested."