Community Chat

[stevieb]

---

@DiAnne wrote:

I think a reason so many restaurants/fast food use Romaine is that it holds up well and stays crunchy in salads, etc.  I just bought butter lettuce at Costco which is my favorite anyway.  

---

I prefer butter lettuce as well and gave up on Romaine after the last round... It's happened too many times, so for me that was their third strike and they're out... Who needs it... In a pinch I'll buy Iceberg... I don't eat lettuce for the nutritional value anyway and the difference in nutritional values for Romaine simply aren't worth it...

[ann1989]

One cup of iceberg lettuce contains: 10 calories, 0 grams of fat, 1 gram protein, 2 grams carbs (1 of dietary fiber), 7 percent of vitamin A, 3 percent of vitamin C, 1 percent of calcium and 2 percent of iron. It also contains trace amounts of potassium, folate, vitamin K, magnesium and phosphorus. Iceberg is cholesterol free and low in sodium. Granted, it isn’t the most nutrient packed vegetable but if it is the only lettuce your child will eat, serve it up.

It is true that darker greens contain more nutrients. Iceberg can be an acceptable choice combined with a variety of other greens to make a delicious salad. Mixing greens is a great way to keep crispiness and nutritional value. Leaf lettuce can be somewhat bitter if it is left too long growing in the ground, and sometimes when it is harvested in a timely manner it can still retain some of its bitterness. By combining leaf lettuce with iceberg, the bitterness can be reduced while maintaining other beneficial nutrients.

If nothing else, iceberg lettuce is 96 percent water so to those of you that don’t drink enough fluids each day, munch on a chunk of iceberg!

I was frequently served iceberg lettuce as a kid and always preferred eating at anyone elses house who served darker greens too.  My parents told me darker greens stuck in their throat and refused to buy it. 

[Moonlady]

@ Spurt I'm sure the grasshopper didn't eat that much lol.

If you only knew what crawled over, inside, and around food before it was picked.

C'mon, people.

[DiAnne]

---

@Moonlady wrote:
@ Spurt I'm sure the grasshopper didn't eat that much lol.

If you only knew what crawled over, inside, and around food before it was picked.

C'mon, people.

---

Like the worms in organic broccoli?

[RollTide2008]

The prepped lettuce cooler at my grocery store was bare today with a notice about the recall. My 14 year old son suggested we get a “ball salad”. It took me a minute to figure out he meant iceberg.

[VaBelle35]

A few years ago there was a recall of something (I want to say canteloup) and they played the conference call with FDA and the other agencies involved in finding the source.  It was fascinating to listen to the timeline of how the melons got infected.

The source was the animal farm next store that had runoff when it rains and that got on the tires of the trucks of the canteloup farm and the trucks went into the facility to drop off the canteloups and they weren't washing the floors properly, they were rinsing them but not disinfecting them.

(Here in the DC area we have a radio station called Federal News Radio and they play all types of federal agency stuff which can be interesting.  I believe you can listen online.)

[lovesrecess]

The only thing we usually eat at CFA is their salads...the market salad is DH’s fave and I like their Cobb salad.....would hate to lose those! I buy salad mix at Costco that doesn’t contain lettuce....the sweet kale has kale and shaved Brussels, etc and since it doesn’t have lettuce, it keeps a long time. Have thrown away too much lettuce since we can’t eat it fast enough. Haven’t bought romaine in a couple of years since the E. coli issue first came up.

[Moonlady]

@ Susan Louise lol...as if I care!

Enjoy your romaine, but do stay away from E.coli.

[sidsmom]

---

@Moonlady wrote:
@Susan Louise, any store, including Wegmans, selling bagged romaine or heads of romaine sourced from the area in question, will be "affected." But as I mentioned, Wegmans continues to sell the BABY romaine heads, at least here, because their source is not part of this recall--nor has it been in the past..

As for the iceberg lettuce bashing, it's untrue that it has NO nutritional value whatsoever. Obviously, darker greens (and there are darker greens than romaine, too) will have more of certain nutrients. And if adults don't know how to add other nutrient-rich ingredients to a salad using iceberg, I just dont know what to say.

Beyond that, iceberg remains the most popular lettuce. The heads are dense (one of the reasons it's not contaminated as often), and comparatively cheap. Also, less handling (ie, for bagged salads) equals fewer chances for contamination. IMO, the crisp (unribbed, like romaine) leaves of iceberg lettuce are a welcome addition to any salad or sandwich, and so are wedges served with dressing.

Oh...and they don't call it CRISPHEAD for nothing. 😉

---

@Moonlady 

ITA

There's a thought in the culinary world where a sign of a truly talented chef is to create a simple salad w/out a lot of seasonings...that same simple thought can be made with the nutrition.  Somewhere, somehow a celebrity chef deemed iceberg as 'throw-away'....and that myth has perpetuated for years/decades.

Remember when kale was that weird throw-away stuff in the buffet lines to make everything look pretty? Funny how It just takes one timely article by someone w/ a loud platform to deem kale a 'superfood' as of today.

It's interesting to see how people understand 'simple' nutrition.  
They are so lost...and so uninformed.  So funny to see people

discount a certain green as nothing but eat all sorts of icky,

processed fast food and think that's better than 'nothing' lettuce

because some magazine article or celebrity chef said so.
Just can't make this up. 

[CelticCrafter]

@RollTide2008 , that's kinda cute what your grandson called it!