The recommendations to stay healthy are getting pretty wild this summer. The CDC suggests that one way to avoid the cyclospora parasite that has caused thousands of cases of gastrointestinal illness in the U.S. is to cook our fresh produce. Because at least one of the outbreaks is perhaps linked to iceberg lettuce, I’m just wondering, is anyone cooking their lettuce? And that’s just the beginning of my questions.

Overall, with the cyclospora outbreaks, I’m seeing the presence of a lot of questions and need for nuance, more than I’m seeing answers and blanket truths. And whether or not most consumers are tracking all the parts and pieces, every news headline and outbreak and incident add to a camel’s back on when the perception versus reality of our food webs come crashing into each other. Are we at or nearing a point of no return on consumer perception, where every consumer who saw an empty shelf in the grocery store cannot unknow that an empty shelf is a possibility?

While the narrative and communication challenges that have arisen with this summer’s cases are real, not to mention the very real illness and even deaths linked to the cases and outbreaks, the questions that are arising around cyclospora are perhaps more suited to deep dives than soundbites. Between daily conversations with friends and family, bit and pieces of news and online conversations, and folks asking questions to me and my family as farmers ourselves, a press release is not going to solve what’s coming up for folks. The questions that are available to grapple with from this moment are big, and they aren’t just about taking a break from shredded lettuce (or any other fresh produce item) that may be implicated in this or any other current or future food safety concerns.

Lack of Relationship: One layer of what this moment in food is showing us is that a lot of folks don’t have a relationship with their food, the people who grow it, the places it is grown, and the practices that are used. Of course that’s a spectrum, some people are very tuned in, and, I’d suggest very few people have deep relationship with every aspect of every bit of food and drink they put in their mouth. When health concerns arise like cyclospora and salmonella this summer, there is often a moment of recognition of not fully knowing what we’re eating.

Incongruence, Perception, Reality, and Responsibility: To me, a large part of what’s being revealed is an incongruence in perception and reality in how food is grown, harvested, and distributed in North America. And, how can that incongruence even exist and persist? A lot of tradeoffs have been made, for the convenience of our lives, to save time and energy and money. And perhaps that incongruence remains in part because as humans, a lot of times we would rather believe our own fantasy of how food is grown than take the close look, and maybe then have to take greater responsibility for how we eat. An example is organic baby carrots. It seems like a lot of folks want to believe that the organic baby carrots at the grocery store were grown at a small family farm within 100 miles of where they live. Nothing against organic baby carrots, but that is not the where and how for growing most organic baby carrots. So the responsibility that is often up is not just responsibility in words, but responsibility in action, to then be making a multitude of changes in how we eat food in order to stay congruent with our identities and stories of who we are.

Food as a Microcosm of Our Identities: There’s the saying “We are what we eat,” often meant as the physical version of that, the one a nutritionist or physiologist can give you. And, there’s the identity part of it, the way our identities are wrapped up in the food we eat and share with those we care about. Things like “I am a healthy eater” or “I am a food connoisseur” or “I am a good parent because I feed my family X, Y, and Z.” We can be pretty attached to who we think we are, and to how we think our actions express that attribute, and food is one way that comes up. And when suddenly the food we thought was healthy or safe is in question, it can also highlight some much broader identity rigidities or distortions.

Approaching Uncertainty: Another layer is how frozen into inaction or disrupted into knee-jerk reaction we as humans and consumers of food can get when there’s uncertainty in our collective field. Retail sales data suggests there’s been a drop in fresh produce sales this summer, and while primarily the impact is in the salad category it is still impacting other produce and salad related items. Further, there’s been a reduction in fast casual restaurant visits. How we handle making choices in moments of uncertainty and rapidly changing information and misinformation is a skill we can continue to build, and I think it's a skill that will continue to serve us as uncertainty remains present in our food webs.

Information and Trust: That brings us to another thread of what is coming up for folks and that is, Where does our information about how we nourish ourselves come from, and how much do we trust each of those sources of information? Yes, I’m going to look to the CDC to keep track of verified cases of illness, mostly because I have no interest in any attempt to do that myself, but no, I’m not going to think that the CDC has a perfectly accurate number (for a whole host of reasons). If the only place we’re looking for answers is outside of ourselves, and we’re invalidating our own experience and knowing, we’re discounting and not trusting a valuable information source that could be one of many information sources contributing to making informed decisions.

Opportunism and Fear: I’ve seen some of what I’d call “opportunist promotion” of buying fruits and vegetables locally in response to all the cyclospora headlines, and I think we could use a little more nuance around that reaction. Could that be a supportive thing to do, to buy more fresh fruits and vegetables locally, if it allows the resources you spend and what you eat to be more aligned with your values, and you to be more in relationship with the values of the way the food is being grown? Absolutely. From a statistical standpoint, can a tiny farm that is growing enough lettuce to feed 100 people have the same outbreak footprint as a farm that’s growing enough lettuce to feed 10,000 people? No, so maybe there is some logic there in the mix too. Are the federal standards and requirements for food safety practices different (more stringent) on larger farms? Under the Food Safety Marketing Act, yes. So to make a decision to Buy Local out of fear of cyclospora infection, out of fear of the unknown, or out of any sort of fear for that matter, well, that’s not exactly an empowered choice or a way of making choices I would encourage.

Where Do We Go From Here? With all these different bits and pieces of news and data trickling out, with the unlikelihood of a cyclospora outbreak source being pinpointed and verified (as in, it’s never previously been achieved in the U.S.), and with maybe a sense of overwhelm at all the deeper layers available from what like a food safety issue, maybe it seems like there’s no clear path forward. But what I’m doing, and what I’d invite others into, is to actually let what is coming up inform what changes, if any, are calling in we individually and communally eat and engage with the food web.

-          Take a deep breath. If you need or want to reduce how much salad you eat for the moment to feel comfortable, adjust away. But also consider the big picture, and your overall health, and what the role of fruit and vegetables are within that for you.

-          Engage in dialogue with those in the food web. Figure out what your food and farming questions are, and start asking them. Perhaps consider asking those food web questions to knowledgeable sources with a variety of perspectives.

-          Identify one small adjustment you can make now to build more relationship with your food and how its grown. Maybe it’s one farmers market purchase a week, or maybe it’s looking up the brand of the produce you buy at the grocery store, or maybe it’s planting some seeds in a community garden. But let this moment generate grounded action, however small.

But by all means, maybe think twice about cooking the lettuce.