What shoppers need to know
“For what’s worth, I haven’t changed my diet significantly,” said Dr. Zoe Weiss, director of microbiology at Tufts Medical Center.
Weiss pointed out that federal officials have linked the national outbreak to iceberg lettuce from Mexico. Taylor Farms, a California-based produce company identified as a likely distributor of contaminated food, recalled all lettuce sourced from central Mexico last month.
So, is it as simple as skipping anything with a Taylor Farms logo at the grocery store?
Not necessarily. For one thing, investigators have yet to definitively trace the source of outbreak to Taylor Farms — and plenty of the company’s products are, in all likelihood, quite safe.
Investigators are yet to rule out other producers, or other produce items, too. There are numerous points along the supply chain where products are packed, washed, and repacked — any of which could be the source of parasites for any given product.
“There’s a misconception [when] we walk into a store and buy, let’s say, mixed greens,” said David Lennarz, co-founder of food safety compliance firm Registrar. “You think, ‘Oh, that came from a farm, they packed it, it came to my store, and boom, I buy it.’”
But in fact, the supply chain for food — and for produce in particular — is “incredibly complex,” he said.
“It is long, there are many players, and currently, there are very few ways that traceability is in place,” he said.
That’s not to say investigators haven’t made progress in tracking the outbreak. But it’s unclear how long it will take before the source of the outbreak is definitively identified and all the contaminated products are recalled.
The optimistic view, Lennarz said, is that pinpointing the source is a matter of “weeks, not months.”
“Now, obviously, once you find the problem, you have to fix it,” he added. “At the farm level or the packing house level, that often involves shutting down until [investigators] identify what’s causing the contamination, and how to eliminate it.”
Weiss said it may be hard to immediately gauge the effectiveness of any recall notices, since symptoms of cyclosporiasis can manifest as late as two weeks after infection.
“The caseload might look like it’s rising before it comes down again,” she said. “You’re not going to see an immediate improvement.”
There are some experts, like Boston-based dietitian Kate Scarlata, who are not willing to take chances. For the time being, store-bought raw lettuce is effectively “off the table” for her, she said Thursday.
“There should be some thoughtfulness to shopping — not fear, but thoughtfulness,” she said. “Personally, I would not encourage much in the realm of raw, uncooked produce at this time. I would just cook your vegetables right now until we have a better sense that this is not on the rise and that it’s on the decline, and that we’ve caught all the things that potentially got contaminated.”
Weiss, though, suggested there may be more risk involved in the supermarket than people realize.
“It’s possible that the lettuce recall takes care of the lettuce problem, but there are other potential avenues of infection that we haven’t fully pinned down yet,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s practical for people just to not eat produce.”
For that reason, experts say one of the best practices is simply to be more informed: Be on the lookout for recalled products and avoid products without a clearly identified source.
“What we should be doing is looking to the public health advisories for where there are recalls and avoiding recalled food,” Weiss said.
Normal safety precautions like washing and rinsing food won’t completely rid infected produce of cyclospora parasites, but it can help reduce their abundance or concentration.
Be cautious, but know that nothing is risk free
It’s not entirely unreasonable, Weiss added, for diners to be picky with fast food restaurants and other establishments where food sourcing isn’t necessarily clear — “out of an abundance of caution.”
Shoppers may also want to steer clear of bagged “spring mixes” or assorted leafy greens, since such offerings are usually packed with lettuce from multiple farms or packing houses.
“That introduces more complexity,” Lennarz said. “If you have a product that has four different ‘ingredients,’ so to speak — if one of them is contaminated, that’s the one that can sicken you. Even [if] the three others were fine.”
And while there’s no way to guarantee that locally grown produce is risk-free, experts said those products are likely much safer than foodstuffs sourced from a large supply chain.
“You can’t say that getting something at a farmers market is definitely without any risk,” Scarlata said. “[But] it’s not this big commercial operation where there are 7,000 points a parasite could get in the mix.”
What health experts do warn against is shifting your diet too much out of fear of contracting cyclosporiasis. There are plenty of alternatives to bagged, shredded iceberg lettuce that don’t involve turning to the carnivore diet, Scarlata said.
“Make your frozen berry smoothie with your Greek yogurt, and still get that delicious fiber that nourishes your gut, keeps your immune system in check,” she said. “Don’t use this as an excuse to just go eat French fries and and chips and packaged crackers because you can’t eat lettuce.”
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports.