Now's Not the Time to Eat Bagged Lettuce

The next time you're tempted to grab a bag of pre-washed, pre-chopped lettuce from your local grocery store, remember: it might be a gamble worth avoiding.

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (Noa) using AI narration. Listen to more stories on the Noa app. When you think of food poisoning, perhaps what first comes to mind is undercooked chicken, spoiled milk, or oysters. But don't overlook your vegetable crisper.

In terms of foodborne illness, leafy greens stand alone. In 2022, they were identified as the cause of five separate multistate foodborne-illness outbreaks, more than any other food. Romaine lettuce has a particularly bad reputation, and for good reason.

A Dark History of Romaine Lettuce

In 2018, tainted romaine killed five people and induced kidney failure in another 27. Last year, an E. coli outbreak tied to—romaine sent 36 people to the hospital across 15 states. The bags of shredded lettuce that promise to be pre-washed and pre-chopped are actually a breeding ground for bacterial growth.

The convenience of pre-shredded lettuce comes with yet another additional risk: food contamination. And washing your bagged lettuce rigorously is not enough to eliminate the risk. Only thorough cooking can kill the bacteria and protect you from getting sick.

A Broken Food Safety System

Many are pointing fingers at the FDA for its lack of action on food safety. Politicians of both parties have seemed content to make cuts to an already overstressed system. Late last year, the Biden administration announced that it was cutting $34 million in funding to states to carry out routine inspections of farms and factories on behalf of the FDA.

And under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the FDA is now making steep funding and staff cuts. The Trump administration has claimed that no actual food inspectors will be laid off as a result of government downsizing, but there's already evidence that the moves will make it harder for the government to respond when illnesses strike.

A Perfect Storm

Spending freezes and cuts to administrative staff have reportedly made it more difficult for FDA inspectors to travel to farms, and for them to purchase sample products in grocery stores for testing. A committee tasked with exploring a range of food-safety questions has been shut down.

One seems to happen every fall, and it'll be up to RFK Jr. to respond. Although Kennedy has promised to foster a culture of radical transparency at the federal health agencies, his first months on the job haven't been reassuring. The staff at the FDA's main communications department—employees typically tasked with briefing national news outlets during outbreaks—have been fired.

The Bottom Line

Skipping pre-chopped bagged lettuce might sound like neurotic advice, but a leafy-green outbreak is almost guaranteed to occur in the coming months. The best thing consumers can do as regulators have continued to drop the ball on food safety is buy whole heads of lettuce.

A lot of lettuce is contaminated by irrigation water that comes from nearby feedlots, and yet it has taken the FDA a decade to enforce water-quality standards for most crops. With so much uncertainty about food safety, busting out a knife and chopping some lettuce beats a trip to the hospital, or a night hugging the toilet.