America has spent the past several years being ordered back toward nature. "Read the label," they’ve been shouting. Fear all things ending in “-ate!” We’ve been advised to shop the perimeter of the supermarket, where virtuous food sits gently misted beneath glorious lighting.
If a product contains an ingredient you cannot pronounce, remember: DO NOT EAT IT. On that point, Cyclospora is pronounced sigh-clo-SPOR-uh. The microscopic parasite is now linked to an outbreak involving iceberg lettuce that has sickened 11,458 people across 20 states, hospitalized 495 and contributed to two deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The lettuce, sourced from central Mexico and processed by Taylor Farms de Mexico, was supplied to restaurants and retailers across much of the country. Meanwhile, Whole Foods, among other retailers, is recalling guacamole, salsa, pico de gallo and other prepared foods because jalapeños may be contaminated with salmonella. The broader outbreak linked to the peppers has sickened hundreds.
This is an exquisite moment in American nutrition: we have finally cleaned up our diets enough to be poisoned by the garnish. The government and the wellness industry have spent years teaching Americans to treat packaged food as a chemical weapons program. So consumers have obediently retreated toward foods that still resemble things.
We’ve been eating lettuce, peppers, cucumbers, fruits, all ingredients accompanied not by a nutrition label but by a small sign explaining which picturesque farm they came from. And yet, unfortunately, bacteria and parasites remain stubbornly unimpressed by aesthetic virtue. Sure, fresh produce is still overall better than Doritos because a product recall doesn’t invalidate concerns about additives, excessive sugar or industrially formulated food.
But do you see the irony in the current state of affairs? America has reduced food safety to a morality play about ingredients when the actual food system is an extraordinarily complicated feat of irrigation, sanitation, refrigeration, processing, transport, surveillance and potential maladies. A pepper can have one ingredient and a supply chain spanning two countries, while a bag of lettuce may look pastoral but has passed through an industrial network capable of distributing the same contamination to dozens of states.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
