As someone with Type 2 diabetes for nearly 25 years, I am very aware of the many types of foods I can and can’t eat to keep my A1C levels where they should be to keep me healthy
Foods high in sugar and carbohydrates are definitely not on my “eat these” list. After all these years, the ability to resist those foods has grown easier. I try to supplement my diet with many of the things deemed “healthy” for me to eat
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Right at the top of my healthy list was salad. As they say, I have proudly “grazed on the greens” and have consumed probably as much of it as a small herd of cattle
That is until a word I had never heard before — cyclospora — made its appearance on the national news, bringing the consumption of lettuce to an abrupt halt for the time being for many of us
Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that has been linked to contaminated iceberg lettuce Michigan has reported more cases than any other state, with thousands of people becoming ill
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Should you wash your prewashed lettuce? An infectious disease expert explains how to eat your greens safely during the cyclospora outbreak
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The real downside to cyclospora is that it can leave those afflicted very sick, and it’s probably a good idea to have plenty of toilet paper handy. Those consequences also just might be “Canada’s retribution,” considering many paper products from the north are subject to tariffs as well
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Fortunately, as of this writing, no deaths had been reported from cyclospora, and antibiotic treatment has been very successful. However, on the flip side of the coin, some people become extremely sick for several weeks before it clears up
What frustrates me is prior to this outbreak, salads with lots of green, leafy lettuce were a major part of my diet. Probably five or six times a week, a salad would either serve as my main course for a meal or be featured as a side with an entree
When dining in restaurants, it generally was a no-brainer to ask for a salad as a side dish with an entree, often replacing the tons of carbs that come with french fries
However, as the outbreak became worse, I made the decision to “flush” all the lettuce out of my refrigerator into the garbage can before needing to make flushes of a different kind after eating it. It really annoys me because we have all been taught about healthy eating habits, and now one of the main things many of us were eating to stay healthy could make us sick
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There are other frustrating side events as well. About 10 days before the cyclospora story broke, I was in Sam’s Club in Muskegon and got a great buy on two 24-ounce bottles of Olive Garden Italian dressing, which I love on a salad. Both are now sitting in my kitchen cabinet until the day when the all-clear has been issued
Mixed right into the bowl of disappointments is having salad toppings like cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, red onions, shredded cheese and croutons all being munched on individually these days instead of being part of a salad
The fate of those toppings kind of reminds me of the old saying “They were all dressed up with no place to go.”
It also made me think about how many sandwiches, subs and wraps are made with lettuce these days. Even my favorite BLT (turkey bacon, lettuce and tomato) sandwich has morphed into a BT. Let me tell you, it’s just not the same
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The odds are good that some lettuce is safe to eat, but once you get what I like to call “the big scare,” people tend to get wary about consuming it until it is safe again. Just a couple of years ago, we had a similar scare with spinach, and for a while it went off everyone’s shopping list or menu until things cleared up
On one hand, it amazes me that in 2026, with supposedly all the federal consumer regulations and safety measures in place, outbreaks of this kind still happen
However, on the other hand, all you have to do is look at some of the people who are running these federal health and food safety organizations along with the others who stood on a stage about a year ago holding a chainsaw bragging about all the federal government agency cuts they were making, and you can say, “Yep, now it makes sense.”
It does make me feel bad for some of these restaurants and food stores that purchased these products in good faith from distributors, but were blamed after people got sick from eating them. I think of the restaurants like Taco Bell, Ruby Tuesday and Ponderosa that rely so heavily on lettuce and salad bars in their products and wonder how they are doing financially because of something that was no fault of their own
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It’s a pretty safe bet to say like all kinds of other similarly tainted foods, “This too shall pass,” but until then there are going to be some wary people out there
Hopefully, things get better soon and we can all enjoy a big salad to celebrate before I see you again on Thursday
Ken Grabowski is a retired journalist who spent more than 36 years in the newspaper business
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