Please don't stop eating vegetables

Woof, what a time for salads. Between the nonstop veggie recalls, fear-inducing headlines prominently featuring the word “diarrhea,” and the group chat forwarding you photos of bagged lettuce in the trash, it has genuinely been a rough few months to be a person trying to eat more vegetables. And the damage went well past the products actually involved: Grocery stores report that shoppers have backed away from all kinds of produce that had nothing to do with recalls.

Which is a problem, because we were already behind in terms of how green our diets are. Only about 1 in 10 American adults hits the CDC recommended daily vegetable intake of 2-3 cups per day. So while these recalls were necessary, a dent in our intake may widen a nutrition gap that was already uncomfortably large.

So what do you do when you're trying to eat better — but you'd also prefer not to spend a weekend in the bathroom? Read on for more info on what’s been going on and what to do about it.

There are always food recalls, but the last few months have felt…different. Like every day there was a new item in the news for potential contamination —mangoes, jalapeños, sprouts, berries (et tu, blueberries?!), and famously, lettuce.

The multistate cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from a single processor in central Mexico grew into one of the largest foodborne illness events the country has experienced (more than 19,500 cases so far). Ultimately, the FDA's investigation traced it to Taylor Farms de Mexico, which recalled all iceberg lettuce sourced from that region on July 17. But it took a while to figure out who the culprit was, which is part of what made this summer feel so different. For weeks we were all increasingly worried about the numbers of people getting sick and what foods to actually avoid. And the outbreaks weren't even limited to the cyclospora issue — we've also been getting bombarded with recalls due to salmonella and e. coli.

So are we dealing with more food recalls than before? Just better at spotting outbreaks than we used to be? Or are we actually monitoring food safety less? "This is the million — billion? — dollar question," says Katelyn Jetelina, Ph.D., an epidemiologist and founder of the newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist. 

In a perfect world, a potential outbreak would be caught early, minimizing its impact on people’s health and how much food needs to be recalled. That’s not what has been happening. "We likely had the largest foodborne illness outbreak in U.S. history this summer, linked to iceberg lettuce, and have recalled more pounds of food than we have in the past 10 years,” says Jetelina. “Those numbers tell me the systems aren't working as well as they were." 

There’s a reason foodborne illnesses always seem to get linked to fruits and veggies. "Much of the contamination of produce takes place in the field, whether we are discussing microbial pathogens or chemical contaminants such as heavy metals," says Felicia Wu, Ph.D., John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Michigan State University. "The pathogens might become present in the field either by contaminated irrigation water, or contaminated waters carried downstream from land where there might be animal manure — if a cattle operation is upstream from where leafy greens are grown, for example — from human behaviors, or other sources."

There are controls at every stage that are supposed to minimize risk — from water and soil testing on the farm, buffer zones near livestock operations, and hygiene rules at the processing plant. "At each step along the farm-to-fork continuum, there are standard operating procedures to minimize the risk of contamination," says Janet Buffer, M.S., MPH, R.D., senior institute manager at the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University. "This includes food handling practices in the home environment." In other words, yes you need to wash your produce before you eat it. The failures, Buffer says, are usually implementation failures. "The breaks may be due to a lack of information, a lack of training, or misunderstanding the process."

That's the structural piece. The other is that eating vegetables when they are raw (as is very common and very delicious) skips over the one step that reliably kills pathogens: heat! 

None of this means all produce is dangerous or that if you cut out fruits and veggies you’ll never get sick. Foodborne illness in the U.S. is common — roughly 1 in 6 Americans get sick from something they ate each year — but it’s caused by a huge range of foods.

When recalls start coming fast and furious, like they were this summer, it understandably impacts how people feel about food — and how they shop. According to a recent survey, 93% of Americans are concerned about how often recalls happen, and 60% say they've avoided an entire food category — all lettuce, say — after a single recall. Fifty-seven percent admit to throwing out recalled food even when their own state wasn't affected, a number that jumps to 70% among millennials.

This summer bore that out. One source estimated that more than 6.5 million households stopped buying salad mixes and kits. Lettuce prices posted their sharpest one-month drop on record in July, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, because demand simply evaporated. And the pullback spread to crops that were never remotely involved: raspberries, cilantro, basil.

We've seen this film before. After the 2006 spinach E. coli recall, more than half of people who'd previously eaten spinach still hadn't gone back months later — and shoppers were tossing perfectly fine bagged produce out of sheer uncertainty.

Jetelina is sympathetic with how people are approaching things these days. "It's fear, frustration, and confusion fueled by suboptimal communication and lack of trust in our systems," she says. "This outbreak was a complete mess to understand what was going on, even for us experts. I don't blame parents, for example, for just throwing up their hands and avoiding [certain foods] altogether."

But she's clear about the cost. "The problem is that produce is healthy for us. So this creates a whole other public health problem through a ripple effect."

There are two big reasons you don’t want to swear off the produce aisle.

A recall is narrow. 

Whenever there is a recall because a food is contaminated, it doesn’t mean the whole produce section is a minefield. It applies to specific lots of specific products sold during specific date ranges. If a product in your fridge doesn't match every detail in the notice — brand, product name, use-by date, establishment number — it isn't part of the recall.

Worth knowing too: A recall is a precautionary net, not a confirmed inventory of tainted food. When contamination is suspected, companies pull the whole affected lot rather than testing every unit, which means much of what gets recalled was never contaminated in the first place. That's the system working conservatively — but it's also why one recall notice shouldn't be read as evidence that the whole produce aisle is compromised.

Your health depends on produce. 

When you chronically under-eat vegetables there are real, well-documented costs. A healthy diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables helps prevent chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers.

"A well-balanced, nutrient-dense diet is absolutely essential to almost every organ of our body," says Jetelina. "We see that a well-rounded diet can help boost our immune systems. It can also help with stroke, hypertension, and heart disease. [Not eating enough produce] is a very big public health problem, and changes in behavior due to recall or confusion makes it even worse."

Your goal can’t be zero risk (as in, eat no veggies, never get sick). Instead, aim for calibrated risk — kind of the same thing you do every time you get in a car. It’s a way to think about something that could be dangerous but that you still need to do. You have to drive to the store, so you buckle up and drive defensively. You have to eat veggies, so you need to be smart about it. That said, caution genuinely matters more for some people than others. Young children, adults over 65, people who are pregnant, and anyone immunocompromised should be more careful, because the consequences of getting sick are steeper.

First, the reassuring part. "Right now, no one needs to do anything with lettuce that they weren't doing before," says Jetelina. "The Taylor Farms outbreak is under control, and many experts are confident [the contaminated food] isn't in circulation."

For everything else, the cleaner you can get your fruits and vegetables, the better. And it doesn’t need to be fancy. A study published in the Journal of Food Protection took lettuce, broccoli, apples, and tomatoes contaminated with a harmless stand-in bacterium and then ran them through the whole menu of home washing methods: plain rinse, water soak plus rinse, rubbing while rinsing, lemon juice soak, vinegar soak, and a commercial veggie wash. Despite the method, all cleaning techniques reduced the amount of bacteria in lettuce. "Running water, with rubbing or brushing, is genuinely effective, and free,” says Buffer. “This is the single best home step."

But that isn’t failsafe, as certain pathogens can survive a trip under the faucet. And bacteria like cyclospora are a prime example. No amount of rinsing was ever going to touch this summer's outbreak. The one intervention that works across the board is heat. To kill cyclospora — as well as many other pathogens — aim for a temperature of at least 158 degrees, says the FDA

With that in mind, here's a practical approach, combining Buffer's guidance with the FDA’s:

• Rinse under running water — and rub. The rubbing or brushing is the part doing the work. Skip soap, detergent, and commercial produce wash; produce is porous and those can be absorbed. Dry with a clean towel afterward.

• Don't soak in the sink. "Soaking produce in water can result in cross-contamination," says Buffer. "If you do not clean your sink well after soaking your produce, you have the potential to cross-contaminate other food items."

• Pull the outer leaves. This is a genuinely worthwhile step for foods like cabbage and romaine, where the outer leaves have taken the most surface exposure and physical damage.

• Skip the re-wash on pre-washed bags. If the packaging says pre-washed or ready-to-eat, the FDA says you can use it as is. (Apparently re-washing mostly introduces opportunities for cross-contamination from your sink, colander, and hands.)

• Keep it cold. Store perishable produce at or below 40°F, and get anything pre-cut or packaged into the fridge promptly, because research on fresh-cut produce found that holding it even a few degrees above 5°C can still support pathogen growth.

• Mind the cutting board. Bacteria hang around on the board and can transfer to whatever you decide to chop next. Wash your cutting boards with warm soapy water and rinse between uses, and keep produce away from the boards and utensils you've used for raw meat, poultry, and seafood.

• Don’t stress about buying from lots of different stores. You may think that shopping at different places can minimize your risk, but Buffer says this isn’t really necessary. "It doesn't reduce the underlying contamination rate of any single item." And farmers markets aren't a safety upgrade: a review of the published research found no consistent difference in produce contamination between farmers markets and other retail stores.

If you're still uneasy about buying fresh fruits and veggies, you have plenty of good options. “Generally the safest and most nutritious approach is to pivot from raw produce to cooked, frozen, or canned options,” says Michele Rager, R.D., senior director of nutrition programming at Weight Watchers. “Heat and heat processing typically kills bacteria and parasites while preserving essential nutrients and fiber."

Are canned and frozen veggies really as good? Often, yes — and occasionally better. Fresh produce headed for the grocery store gets harvested, transported, and stored before appearing on the shelf, and water-soluble vitamins like C decline over that journey. Produce headed for the freezer, on the other hand, is picked at peak ripeness and flash-frozen within hours, which locks the nutrient profile in place.  

Research from UC Davis comparing fresh and frozen found frozen held up just as well — and after several days in a home refrigerator, frozen sometimes retained even more vitamin C or vitamin E than its fresh counterpart. Plus they’re easy to cook with. "Frozen veggies roast up beautifully and require zero chopping," says Rager. Her reliable freezer list: 

• Peas, 

• Spinach

• Broccoli

• Corn

• Berries

Just scan the ingredient list to make sure you're getting mostly vegetables, instead of a lot of cheese or butter sauce.

And heat processing, which is what happens during canning, actually makes some antioxidants easier for your body to absorb. Research shows it increases the bioaccessibility of lycopene in tomatoes and beta-carotene in pumpkin and carrots. Rager calls canned tomatoes and pumpkin the standouts.

For canned fruit, choose water or 100% juice over heavy syrup. And for canned vegetables, look for "No Salt Added" or "Low Sodium" — which the FDA defines as 140 mg or less per serving. If low-sodium isn't available, USDA research found that draining and rinsing canned vegetables under cold running water for about 30 seconds cuts sodium by roughly 9% to 21%.

The mindset shift here is verify, don't avoid.

When a recall hits, don't clear a shelf in your fridge — check the actual product. FoodSafety.gov aggregates real-time recalls and alerts from both FDA and USDA in one place, and the FDA's recall page posts company announcements with the specific brands, lot codes, and date ranges involved. You can also sign up for alerts so you're not relying on your group chat.

Then match every detail. If the brand, product name, and use-by date don't all line up with what's in your fridge, it isn't part of the recall.

Buffer gives this example: Say you've got a bag of frozen mixed berries in your freezer, and that same brand of frozen mixed berries gets recalled. So you check the bag. The best-by date doesn't match the recall details, and neither does the lot number. "Therefore, you would not need to discard the product," she says. That’s it – you’re done. It takes a few minutes and it can save you real money.

As for sorting your grocery list into safe and unsafe columns — Buffer's answer is that you can't, quite. "'Low-worry' depends on which risk you mean," she says. Heavily processed, shelf-stable, or thoroughly cooked foods carry the lowest pathogen risk, but more processing usually means less desirable nutritional profiles. "There's no way to sort a grocery list into a single 'safe' column,” Buffer says. “You're always trading one kind of risk consideration for another."

While this summer’s lettuce recall made it feel scary to buy fresh produce, you don’t need to avoid all fruits and vegetables. Recalls are always for specific batches of food, so throwing away all your produce is not the answer. And avoiding the produce aisle completely isn’t good for your health. "My biggest takeaway is not to let headline anxiety derail healthy habits," says Rager. "Because produce recalls link to specific items and regions, avoiding all produce isn't recommended. However, if you feel cautious about raw items or have individual health considerations, canned and frozen options can provide a safe, convenient, and equally nutritious alternative." There’s also a lot you can do at home to keep yourself safe when eating fresh produce: Clean everything well under running water, store produce correctly, and when in doubt, cook up your veggies to kill anything lingering.