At the Moment, All the Salad Is in the Trash
Two salad bag recalls may make you skip a serving of vegetables this week. Maybe forever.
The most recent review from the Centers for Disease Control is Fresh Express Sliced Crispy Sunflower Salad Sets. These kits are blamed for eight cases of E. coli food poisoning from three different states. No deaths were reported, but three of the cases had to be hospitalized.
CDC recommends looking for “UPC 0 71279 30906 4 starting with lot code Z and expiration date December 07, 19 inclusive” in the upper right corner of the package to check if the package in your refrigerator is one of the salads remembered.
The warning came shortly after the CDC advised people not to eat romaine lettuce grown in or around Salinas. “This includes all usable dates and brands of romaine lettuce from the region,” the CDC said . If the location is not listed on the salad, the agency advised to throw it away just in case.
More than 100 people in 23 states have been diagnosed with the same E. coli strain as those affected by Fresh Express kits, although it’s unclear if there is a link between the two.
We at Lifehacker have eaten salad bags for a while, but can we agree that all salad is doomed?
The CDC’s E. coli outbreak website lists two outbreaks of romaine lettuce in 2018, an outbreak involving leafy greens in 2017, and even archives of outbreaks since 2006. can’t be trusted.
Salads in packages are especially to blame because their contents, which often come from different farms, are distributed everywhere, not just in one geographic region. This increases the likelihood that salad, somewhere along the way, will end up on our plates. The salad is indeed washed several times in a chlorinated bath, all this bathing does not kill E. coli .
If you still want a salad for some reason, keep in mind that buying it from a small local farm may not help you avoid foodborne illness. If you buy a head of lettuce, the FDA recommends removing and discarding the outer leaves, and then rinsing the remaining ones before using. Spraying with vinegar will help kill bacteria, but in this era of salad disasters, there are no guarantees. Sorry!