November 20, 2018

Romaine Lettuce Is Great But You Shouldn’t Eat It Right Now Because the CDC Says It’s Unsafe

That still doesn’t mean the pretentious lettuce elitists are right.

This is a person who loves romaine lettuce but just got news from the CDC that they're going to have to stop eating it for a while. They were at the beach when they heard.Antonio Guillem/iStock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A lot of fancy people who live in ivory towers and spend their days lounging around on plush furniture from Design Within Reach sipping premium raw water and talking about Foucault think romaine lettuce is bad and that if you eat it you are as uninspired as most American filmmakers (with the exception of David Lynch, whom they praise endlessly). But these elites are wrong.

Romaine lettuce is great. It’s the lettuce in Caesar salad! People love Caesar salad. You can buy Caesar salads on airplanes. That is how popular Caesar salads are. Romaine is great because it has a nice crunch, but it isn’t all crunch like iceberg, which the food elitists do not even dignify to acknowledge. Romaine also has a nice leafy bit, but it isn’t just a soft flaccid leaf, like bibb. I also like the taste, though I can’t describe it because I did not attend the finest schools in Paris. It’s cool that it’s sometimes chopped, but then sometimes not chopped—which leads me to a fork-and-knife Caesar, which is a fun indulgence! Not every day. No one is having fork-and-knife Caesars every day. That is a distraction. But once in a while, you want to celebrate something nice and you have a nice fork-and-knife Caesar. And it’s nice! But then some rich man with a goatee comes up to you and you don’t even know this guy but he says, “Oh yeah, if you like that, you’ll love a kale Caesar.” No, dude. Wrong. I have had a kale Caesar. They are not good. Kale Caesars are disgusting.

In general people should stop telling other people what foods they should and should not eat. Food elitism sows division in our kitchens. The only people who should be telling people what not to eat is the Center for Disease Control. When the CDC says you shouldn’t eat romaine, which is now because it has E. coli, then okay, you shouldn’t eat romaine. (Seriously, you definitely shouldn’t eat it right now.) But when the Aspen Ideas crowd tells you to stop eating romaine because “endives are better,” you should ignore them.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate