Op-Ed: It Might Be Time to Stop Eating Lettuce

The nasty Cyclospora outbreak linked to tainted lettuce may have some people temporarily steering clear of the leafy green. In a Washington Post column, Tamar Haspel makes the case that the shift should be permanent for everyone. For one thing, leafy greens such as lettuce (because they're eaten raw) are linked to more illnesses than any other food. That risk might be worth it if lettuce, which is 95% water, packed a dynamite nutritional punch, but it doesn't come close, argues Haspel. Another factor: Americans toss roughly as much lettuce as they consume—about 3 billion pounds a year. It's an incredible waste considering that lettuce takes up 375,000 acres of farmland, not to mention all the water it requires and the cost of shipping it across the country.

For the record, Haspel makes clear that she actually likes lettuce. "There's often a lettuce-based salad on my table—partly because I like it, partly because I'm hoping it'll distract me from a second helping of the pasta with vodka cream sauce," she writes. But, she adds, "if we're going to try to craft a better food supply—one conducive to limiting environmental impact and improving human health—we need to give lettuce a good, hard look." Read the full essay, in which she ponders replacing crops of lettuce with crops of far more nutritious lentils.