Latest from Food Politics: Should we be eating lettuce?

I’ve been following the Cyclospora outbreak with riveted interest because it so exemplifies what’s wrong with our food system: not enough safety effort from producers and not enough government oversight. So here is Washington Post writer, Tamar ...

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By Marion Nestle September 03 2026 Should we be eating lettuce? I’ve been following the Cyclospora outbreak with riveted interest because it so exemplifies what’s wrong with our food system: not enough safety effort from producers and not enough government oversight. So here is Washington Post writer, Tamar Haspel, asking Why we should stop eating lettuce, cyclospora or not.   “Lettuce,” she says, “makes us sick, wastes resources and has minimal nutritional value. Why are we still consuming it?” Her arguments: Waste: “The Agriculture Department estimates that we waste as much lettuce as we eat. Roughly, we eat 3 billion pounds and we toss 3 billion pounds every year. Low nutrient value: Lettuce is mainly water. You have to eat a lot of lettuce to get nutritional value. Carbon emissions: “CarbonCloud estimates that lettuce’s carbon cost is 0.56 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of lettuce, a number that’s right in line with Our World in Data’s estimate of the “other vegetables” category. That means our 6 billion pounds of lettuce generate 3 billion pounds of carbon dioxide. That’s 2.7 million metric tons, more than half a million cars’ worth.” Land use: “The U.S. generates all that carbon dioxide by growing lettuce on 375,000 acres. (We also import lettuce.) That’s an area bigger than Cape Cod….” Cost/Benefit: “So, on one side of the ledger we have 1.7 million annual cases of food poisoning, $3.7 billion and 3 billion pounds of rotting lettuce. On the other we have, basically, an excuse to kid yourself into eating blue cheese dressing….” Well, the Cyclospora outbreak has caused lots of people to follow this advice.  As food safety lawyer Bill Marler writes: Six and a Half Million Households Quit Buying Salad in a Single Month. Eighty-Two Percent Say They Will Come Back When This Is Contained. The Industry Cannot Message Its Way to Contained. More than 6.5 million American households stopped buying salad mixes and kits in the month ending July 26, against the month before. Eighty-seven percent of produce shoppers know about the Cyclospora outbreak. More than a quarter of households say they have quit salads and fresh greens entirely and another one in ten has cut back, which Numerator puts at roughly $280 million in consumer produce spending at risk for every month this continues…Salad trips at quick-service restaurants fell more than 16 percent. He also points to the irony: We are not substituting other vegetables for lettuce; we are eating fewer vegetables overall—at the same time the government is urging us to Eat Real Food. As he puts it today, Shoppers Are Walking Past the Produce Aisle. Telling Them We Have the Safest Food Supply in the World Will Not Bring Them Back (check out the New Yorker cartoon, if nothing else). Comment So I’m not opposed to eating lettuce.  Haspel’s arguments can be made for any vegetable.  I like it in salads and sandwiches and just about anything else.  I grow it, buy it at farmers markets, and buy whole heads at grocery stores.  I just avoid bagged salads. Here’s what I think are the real issues raised by the Cyclospora outbreak.  We need: Better oversight and enforcement of existing food safety rules Pending food safety rules (traceability!) to be implemented, despite industry lobbying. Vegetable growers to insist on better standards (an outbreak like this hurts all vegetable growers, not just those growing lettuce in Mexico) Consumers to insist on our right to safe food Food safety to be taken seriously—by government, industry, and eaters. Food safety is a major, major issue in food politics.   The post Should we be eating lettuce? appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle      Related Posts The root cause of the massive Cyclospora outbreak: industry consolidation FDA’s new rules on produce safety Update on the Cyclospora outbreak: What to do?   Now Available: What to Eat Now My new book, What to Eat Now, is officially out! It's both a field guide to food shopping in America and a reflection on how to eat well—and deliciously. For more information and to order, click here. You can explore the full archive of this (almost) daily blog at foodpolitics.com, where you'll also find information about my books, articles, media interviews, upcoming lectures, favorite resources, and FAQs. Visit the Site » ​​​​​​​ Marion Nestle Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, Emerita © Marion Nestle. You're receiving this email because you've signed up to receive updates from us. If you'd prefer not to receive updates, you can unsubscribe. Safely Unsubscribe • Archives • Preferences • Contact • Subscribe • Privacy

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Latest from Food Politics: RIP Wendell Berry, 1934 - 2026

Alas, we must now mourn the death of one of the great heroes of food politics, the honorable and immensely inspiring Wendell Berry. His very existence was enough for hope that a decent food system might some day be possible in the United States. When I ...

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By Marion Nestle September 02 2026 RIP Wendell Berry, 1934 – 2026 Alas, we must now mourn the death of one of the great heroes of food politics, the honorable and immensely inspiring Wendell Berry. His very existence was enough for hope that a decent food system might some day be possible in the United States. When I think of his writings—his many books, essays, and poems—the words “decency” and “values” leap to mind. He believed so deeply in the inherent worth of agrarian life—the idea that small-scale, sustainable, organic, regenerative agriculture, plant and animal, is the bedrock of a healthy, moral, and ethical life.  He lived that life. He also believed that agrarian values are fundamental to healthy, moral, and ethical societies.  Ethics.  Imagine that. I was honored to meet him for the first time at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky in 2007.  I have had this photo on the wall of my NYU office ever since. He was a constant source of inspiration. What a loss. I’ve collected a few memorial items recently posted. The obituary in the New York Times Berry’s 1981 Schumacher lecture: “People, Land, and Community.” His Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.  It ends: Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection. The Peace of Wild Things (from Instagram, his reading, illustrated) When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. Another verse The fragment of the earth that is now me is only on its way through me. It is on its way from having been a tree, a school of fish, a terrapin, a flock of birds. It will pass through all those forms again. The post RIP Wendell Berry, 1934 – 2026 appeared first on Food Politics by Marion Nestle      Related Posts RIP Carlo Petrini: a huge loss to the food world and to humanity   Now Available: What to Eat Now My new book, What to Eat Now, is officially out! It's both a field guide to food shopping in America and a reflection on how to eat well—and deliciously. For more information and to order, click here. You can explore the full archive of this (almost) daily blog at foodpolitics.com, where you'll also find information about my books, articles, media interviews, upcoming lectures, favorite resources, and FAQs. Visit the Site » ​​​​​​​ Marion Nestle Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, Emerita © Marion Nestle. You're receiving this email because you've signed up to receive updates from us. If you'd prefer not to receive updates, you can unsubscribe. Safely Unsubscribe • Archives • Preferences • Contact • Subscribe • Privacy

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