The hazard of lettuce

Washington Post - Cyclospora, a parasite spread through human feces, is the culprit. And it probably arrived on your table via lettuce. We don’t know all the details of the outbreak, the largest ever tracked in the United States, but “the odds are very high that the now-recalled Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce from Mexico is the source for many of the illnesses,” says journalist Helena Bottemiller Evich, founder and editor in chief of Food Fix, a popular newsletter about food policy.

This isn’t surprising. Leafy greens are responsible for more illnesses than any other food category, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 2024 analysis found that lettuce was the source of something like 1.7 million cases of foodborne illnesses per year, and the economic cost was $3.7 billion. Lettuce and other vegetables that are generally eaten raw top the charts here primarily because most pathogens that make us sick don’t survive cooking. It’s certainly possible that your collard greens are contaminated, too, but once you braise them with a smoked ham hock and a little vinegar, you’ll never know.

Aiding and abetting foodborne illness may be lettuce’s biggest offense. But it doesn’t have much else going for it, either, and there’s a reasonably strong case that we would be better off without it.