The lettuce you already ate

One · What happened

A parasite in the salad, and a month before anyone said so

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention closed the file on 11 September. 12,883 confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis, in 21 states. At least 570 of those people ended up in a hospital. Two people, both in Michigan, died. CDC calls it the largest outbreak of this particular parasite the country has recorded.

The source traced back to shredded iceberg lettuce grown and processed at a Taylor Farms plant in central Mexico. Restaurants in the affected states, mostly Taco Bell locations, kept it on ordinary menu items the whole time. Nobody knew yet why people were getting sick. The first confirmed illness started on 14 June. Taylor Farms didn’t recall the lettuce until 17 July, over a month later, and confirmed cases kept coming in for another month after that, through 17 August. On the single worst day before the recall, health departments logged more than 1,000 new infections at once.

Two · What it is doing

Carefulness that arrived after the danger did

You already ate it, maybe. That’s the part of this that never shows up in a case count. A recall doesn’t reach back and un-eat a salad from three weeks before anyone knew to worry about it. By the time the lettuce came off the shelves, thousands of people had already swallowed whatever was going to make them sick, most of them without knowing it yet, since cyclospora can take a week or more to show itself and then drags on for weeks after that.

So what does a person do with that, once the news says it’s over. Wash the lettuce twice now, where once used to be plenty. Read the little sticker on the bag looking for a country of origin that used to mean nothing at all. Order the burger without the shredded stuff, just in case, in a month when the case count has already stopped climbing.

None of it reaches the actual danger anymore. Whatever exposure mattered already happened, back in June or July, and no amount of care in September travels back to change it. The extra washing isn’t really about the lettuce at this point. It’s about needing to have done something, because sitting with a danger you couldn’t see and can’t verify is close to unbearable for most people, and this month’s carefulness is standing in for the caution nobody got the chance to use back in June.

Worth sitting with, too, because most of us never thought about the lettuce before any of this. The bag said pre-washed, the label said triple-washed, and that was as far as the thinking went. Trust was already there, every single time you reached for it. It just wasn’t trust in God. It was trust in a supply chain none of us has ever laid eyes on, and it held for years without a single thank-you, right up until the week it didn’t.

Three · Where the ground is

Provision was never something you actually verified

Paul writes to Timothy about people telling Christians to abstain from certain foods, as though holiness worked that way. His answer doesn’t sound like caution at all. Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:4–5). He isn’t telling Timothy the food was safe. He’s saying something bigger than that. The meal in front of you, at every dinner you’ve ever eaten back to before you could read a label, was never something you actually secured. Somebody grew it. Somebody you’ll never meet washed it. Somebody drove it through three states you’ll never visit, and it landed on your table anyway, most nights, for years, without you doing anything but reaching for it.

That was already true in May, before anybody outside a lab had said the word cyclospora this year. You weren’t any safer in May than you are now. You just didn’t know yet what you didn’t know, and that gap between what’s actually true and what you happen to be aware of is where most of your peace has always lived, whether you noticed it or not.

The extra wash, the second look at the sticker, none of that is wrong to do. A grown man ought to read a recall notice when there is one. But if the point of doing it is to finally arrive at certain, there is no certain to arrive at. Nobody who ate that lettuce in June could have read their way out of it, and nobody reading a label in September is buying immunity for October. What you’re actually being asked to do with your food, same as you always were, is receive it with a plain thank-you. Stop running an audit on it, and hand the part you can’t verify to the God who has been keeping this particular supply chain running a lot longer than Taylor Farms has existed.

Jesus gets at the same thing from a different angle in Matthew 10:29–31. Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from your Father, he tells a crowd of frightened people, and then tells them not to be afraid, because they’re worth a great deal more than a flock of sparrows. He isn’t talking about food safety. He’s talking about the small stuff nobody was watching, the kind that happens where you can’t see it. He tells that frightened crowd none of it gets past their Father unnoticed either.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

The recall already happened. There’s nothing left for vigilance to do this week except sit there and hum. So do something with your hands this week, because managing the fear only maintains it. Give it an answer instead.

1. 01

   Say a real thanks over one meal this week.

   Not the reflex version you mumble before anyone’s listening. Name the specific thing you can’t verify about the food in front of you, and say the thanks anyway, where your family can hear you do it.

2. 02

   Cook the meal you’ve been quietly avoiding.

   The salad you stopped buying in July, the thing you keep walking past at the store. Make it and serve it this week, and don’t narrate your nerves about it while you do.

3. 03

   Find out what your kids think actually happened.

   Ask them, in whatever words they’d use. Children pick up half a scary story and fill the rest in themselves, and correcting what they’ve got wrong is a different job than reading a headline yourself.

4. 04

   Cook a meal for somebody who actually needs one.

   A new mother from your own congregation, a neighbor between jobs, somebody who’s sick or short on groceries right now. Make it yourself and carry it to their door this week.

5. 05

   Tell one person about a time you were provided for.

   By name, this week, not as a lesson. A job that came through, a bill that got covered, a meal that showed up when you didn’t arrange it. Say what happened and stop there.