Fucking excellent question.
Explosive diarrhea is in the news. Cyclospora, a parasite spread through human feces, is the culprit. And it probably arrived on your table via lettuce.
Well, that's pretty shit.
"Leafy greens are responsible for more illnesses than any other food category, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
A 2024 analysis found that lettuce was the source of something like 1.7 million cases of foodborne illnesses per year, and the economic cost was $3.7 billion. Lettuce and other vegetables that are generally eaten raw top the charts here primarily because most pathogens that make us sick don’t survive cooking
"Aiding and abetting foodborne illness may be lettuce’s biggest offense."
Oh lord, I love this article... it's beautiful and it says what I already strongly believe!
If you’re thinking that all vegetables are mostly water, you’re right! And some other salad vegetables aren’t that much different from lettuce. Cucumbers, celery and radishes are right up there.
Your daily 14 grams of lettuce has one-quarter of a gram of fiber, a bit of your daily potassium, and a few smidgens of other minerals and vitamins.
Arguments against:
- Nutrients: there really is no point to lettuce, just water and filling. No gains. Americans eat 14 grams a day of this crap, but it gives them nada (but risk of infections/diaherra). Takes up space in your stomach and gut, filling you up but not providing you with anything you really want.
- Waste: Most lettuce consumed doesn't get eaten. It's just shoved from round to kitchen to meal plates to the trash. I'm literally scraping off the lettuce from the kebab sandwich I'm eating as I'm typing this.
- Acreage area and CO2 emissions: most people here (correctly) don't give a shit(!) about emissions, but lettuce and the growth/distribution of which is a contributor -- albeit, of course very small -- with huge opportunity costs. We could grow and ship something else in its place
An acre of solar in a sunny place (and you grow lettuce in sunny places) can deliver something like 400 megawatt-hours per year. Since an average American home uses about 11 megawatt-hours per year, those 270,000 acres could power nearly 10 million homes.
Where was this article when I was a kid? Freaking leafy greens were the bane of my existence.
It often seems to me that about 90% of how I was taught to understand food when I was younger is completely wrong. Not just misguided, but actively harmful and stupid. It's amazing.
What I don't understand is why it happens? Surely people can make just as much money by selling beef as they can by selling lettuce? Or is there something about cheaper products (ie they are often higher margin?) that produces this trend towards ass-backward health info?
It could also be that the analysis presented here is ass-backwards.
That would fit the tendency of trendy health information being goofy.
I'm taking the other side of that bet
I say we make @realBitcoinDog eat a bunch of lettuce and see how long it takes to get explosive diarrhea.
I’ll take the over of whatever line we set.
Deal
oh my gawd
Just let us know how long it takes
eat lettuce until $100k
The best first approximation has always been that everyone is wrong about everything.
I literally have a folder with an unfinished book manuscript using that title
Sounds like a Jane Austen / Charles Dicken opening line.
High praise
Stop me!
Weakling!!
I will eat anything that is growing in my back yard that's edible. Lots of wild leafy greens available. It might be better to consider this kind of stuff medicine more so than food.
what medical/medicinal properties do lettuce have?
that depends on how it's grown and where it's grown and when it's grown and what grows near it and who's growing it.
No it doesn't.
Tell me one verified, known medical use for lettuce
If the plant is mostly water, is that water different because it is being filtered through the plant vs water through a reverse osmosis filter for example? If the plant is grown by the person consuming it, the water will have a higher capacity to increase the vital capital of that person. When I say it depends on the conditions in which it's grown this is what makes the difference. The lettuce itself isn't the problem it's the way it's cultivated. Food is medicine and especially so when growing it yourself.
Lettuce OK, but leave cucumbers out of it.
I will make an exception for them, as well; too yummy
It’s particularly pointless, considering all the other leafy greens have significantly greater nutrient density.
If the anti-lettuce hypothesis is true, and it provides minimal nutritional value compared to the disease risks and costs to produce, then we'd expect lettuce to be a fairly modern food choice, not common in historical diets.
It might be easier to produce in many environments and consumers may prefer it over other greens for various foods.
The perfect rhethorical question doesn't exi...
"Which would you rather have, a solar-powered home or explosive diarrhea?"
Lettuce takes more calories to digest than it provides to the body.
I believe that. Useless.
Lettuce's high water and raw prep can spread parasites if washed poorly.
If you enjoy this kind of thing, our little ~food_and_drinks corner would love to hear from you.
Cannot believe the moronic logic of this article - lettuce is used for texture and to hold the sauce, not nutrition.
Some food is simply more enjoyable with lettuce.
Enjoy your lettuce free burgers and salads morons.