You Can Eat the Salad Again If Needed.
If you’ve been dreaming of romaine lettuce for months now, I have both good and bad news for you. The bad news is, your salad tastes terrible . The good news is that romaine is safe to eat again , according to the CDC.
Since the holidays, we’ve had to check salad labels and avoid anything grown in California’s Salinas Valley region. Romaine from this area has been linked to E. coli (specifically the infamous O157: H7 strain), which can cause bloody diarrhea, severe stomach cramps, and vomiting. A total of 167 people in 27 states were infected, 15 developed kidney failure, but fortunately none of them died.
In all fairness, lettuce is not always dangerous, but it is prone to massive contamination from time to time. Lettuce nationwide may only come from one or two growing regions, depending on the season, which means outbreaks can occur across the country at the same time. And unlike many other foods, we don’t prepare salad, leaving the infecting bacteria alive and well to wreak havoc on our digestive system.
So, enjoy the romance-based salads if you really want to.