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Dear Dot,
Where do you suggest buying “safe” greens?
– Janet
The Short Answer: Buy whole heads of lettuce instead of bagged greens — less processing means less exposure to contaminants like the cyclospora currently linked to a multi-state outbreak. Local farms and farmers markets are your safest bet, since shorter travel distances mean fewer chances for contamination. Wash well in cold water, strip outer leaves, and refrigerate promptly.
Dear Janet,
There are a lot of us — more than 22,000 across 15 states — who’ve spent our summer not on a beach but on our toilets, thanks to an outbreak of cyclosporiasis from contaminated lettuce, which causes, among other symptoms, “explosive diarrhea.”
No sooner did we think it was safe to leave our bathrooms than we got news that jalapeños are the latest Trojan horse, this time carrying salmonella.
The contaminations have been traced to a company called Taylor Farms and specifically to farms in Mexico. But because Taylor Farms products are sold under some private labels — including in stores dotted around the country, such as Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s — it’s reasonable to wonder how safe the produce is at your local grocer.
Though the lettuce recall seems to have been thorough and successful — “That product is off the market, so I think there’s absolutely lower risk for cyclospora in terms of eating lettuce,” Kali Kniel, a professor of microbial food safety at the University of Delaware, told Wired magazine — there remains the jalapeño contamination, along with potential contamination of parsley and cilantro in North Carolina.
What’s a greens-loving consumer to do?
We can start by recognizing that our complex and sometimes labyrinthine food system makes contamination both more likely to happen and harder to trace when it does. Those convenient bagged lettuces that are “triple-washed” are clean to commercial standards, but not utterly devoid of harmful germs. Contaminants can be introduced at any stage — harvest, cut, wash, conveyor belt, packaging.
What’s more, bagged produce typically travels farther to get to us, allowing germs plenty of time to proliferate and muddying the path back to contamination if an outbreak makes it necessary to trace.
Cyclospora specifically is a stubborn pathogen, its eggs adhering mightily to the rough surfaces of lettuce and typically resisting chlorine and other commonly used sanitizers, wrote Lisa Cuchara, an immunologist and infectious disease specialist in this story for The Conversation.
We can reduce risk by buying whole heads of lettuce, which undergo less processing than bagged greens, thereby reducing exposure to microbes. Strip away outer leaves, give the rest a good wash in clean, cold water, and dry in a salad spinner or on a towel.
The same holds true for greens purchased from local farms or at farmers markets — a shorter trip with fewer chances for contamination means a safer salad. And, as a bonus, buying local keeps money right in your community, cuts down on food miles from transport, eliminates or reduces plastic packaging, and gives you the chance to get to know your local farmers and their methods.
And when you return from your farmers market, get that lettuce into your crisper as soon as possible, as bacteria multiplies at room temperature. (Don’t miss Bluedot’s Guide to Avoiding Food Waste, which provides a great illustration for where and how to store your produce to keep it fresh and safe to eat.)
Cautiously,
Dot
