In periods of uncertainty, it can be comforting to find common ground.
For salad lovers, the ongoing cyclospora outbreak has become an opportunity to throw shade at one of the least cool leafy green options, iceberg lettuce.
After the US Food and Drug Administration linked the outbreak to iceberg lettuce, further details surrounding the contaminated food supply continue to evolve.
Still, some salad bowl chains have been quick to point out that your lunch would be safe to eat since the tainted leaf is flora non grata in their kitchens.
“We don’t serve shredded iceberg lettuce,” Chipotle said in a recent all-caps message to its app users.
Elsewhere on its site, the company specifies that its “supergreens” salad bowl blend is made of romaine, baby kale, and baby spinach.
“We want to assure our guests that we do not serve iceberg lettuce in our restaurants,” Chopt Creative Salad Company, a chain based in the Northeast, said in a notice on its website.
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“Sweetgreen does not use iceberg lettuce in our menu,” national chain Sweetgreen said in a similar alert.
On Monday, Just Salad founder and CEO Nick Kenner sent an email titled “lettuce you can trust,” assuring customers that his company “does not serve iceberg, pre-cut or shredded lettuce.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have tracked cases of cyclospora in 31 states since May 1, including more than 800 confirmed cases and another 1,500 cases under investigation. The cyclospora parasite is transmitted to people who have eaten food or water contaminated with human feces at some point in production, and an infection typically leads to severe diarrhea.
The outbreak appears to be dragging on foot traffic, according to location data analytics firm Placer.ai.
On Friday, July 17, visits to Chipotle were down nearly 7% compared to the weekday average earlier in the year. Chopt took a 14.3% hit, while Sweetgreen had a modest 1.4% decline, according to the data. Just Salad was not included in the report.
This episode is the latest in a run of bad PR for iceberg lettuce, which has been criticized for its lack of flavor and nutrition.
“It’s at the bottom of the salad food chain,” Chick-fil-A’s head of innovation, David Farmer, told Business Insider in 2016. “There is no nutritional value in iceberg lettuce.”
Farmer removed the ingredient from the chicken chain’s recipes.
Other nutritionists praise iceberg’s ability to stay fresh and crisp where other greens wilt, and note it can be a good source of fiber and hydration.
Either way, eschewing iceberg is one way to keep your lunch from feeling like a leap of faith.