Is it safe to eat romaine yet?

San Jose Mercury News - 5/9/2018

May 09--Caesar salads are once again beckoning you, tempting you with their leafy green crunch, but it is safe to eat romaine again after the latest outbreak of E. coli? Nope.

This is your reminder to stay away for a while longer. The most recent E. coli outbreak has already made 121 sick and killed one (in California) across 25 states. CDC officials have identified the source of the contagion as the Yuma, Ariz., growing region. But, alas, they still can't nail down the precise origin. Officials remain uncertain if it came from fields, water sources, harvesting machinery, processing plants or distribution centers.

Unfortunately that means romaine is still risky. The largest American E. coli flare-up since 2006, when contaminated spinach was the culprit, is expected to continue for several weeks. Unless you can definitively determine that your romaine did not come from the Yuma area, you should avoid it.

"Product labels often do not identify growing regions; so, do not eat or buy romaine lettuce if you do not know where it was grown," as the CDC site puts it. "This advice includes whole heads and hearts of romaine, chopped romaine, baby romaine, organic romaine, and salads and salad mixes containing romaine lettuce. If you do not know if the lettuce in a salad mix is romaine, do not eat it."

Worse still, since there is often a lag time between when someone gets sick and when the case is reported, there are likely more cases in the pipeline.

"One of the major challenges of identifying sources of foodborne disease is people eat a lot of food," Matthew Stasiewicz, assistant professor of applied food safety at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said to USA Today. "There's also a major problem remembering what they eat. When eating a complex food, like a sandwich or burrito, you might not even know what you're eating."

For the record, the demographic group most impacted by the outbreak is women. According to the CDC, 63% of the people who have gotten sick are female. As USA Today points out, that may well be because women love a good salad.

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