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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

> Leafy vegetables were also the second most common cause of food poisoning-related hospitalizations.

I never quite got to like lettuce. I don't know why people like it. It just doesn't have much taste, its leaves are too big, so have to shove them in awkwardly.

I'd rather have a salad with chopped ripe tomatoes, onions / chives, cucumbers, cabbage, etc. Even with those, I often wonder if people don't eat more veggies because American veggies from grocery store taste like plastic. So eating them is a chore, because well, it's "healthy" but not because they taste good.

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Iceberg lettuce is the most pointless waste of time and money in the entire agricultural industry.

You are absolutely correct in your assessment of vegetable quality. Everything is bred for transportability, appearance, and shelf life, then flavor and nutrition go out the window.

It's exactly the same story as the Red Delicious apple. They were bred to be very red, not at all sour, and to not bruise too easily. So they look good, but taste like garbage.

I have noticed the same devolution in watermelons. You used to be able to get huge, arm-filling watermelons, juicy and sweet, but shot through with big black seeds. Now at the supermarket they're all seedless, nearly flavorless, and small.

Same with strawberries. They used to be small, but intensely flavored, and ranging from very sweet to slightly sour. Now you can find them as big as your clenched fist, but then bite into one, and it just tastes like dirty water.

I don't buy food to look at it. It seems like the greatest minds of the last agricultural generation have all been wasted on making foods look like they'll taste good, and look like they're worth the money, but then become a total disappointment to your tongue.

Yes, agreed.

My parents used to have a small garden growing up and we grew tomatoes once in a while. It was pain, because they needed a lot of watering, but they had an intense delicious flavor. I'd just go and eat them one after another right off the vine. Here in US it's hard to find that flavor. Some of the little green and yellow mixed tomatoes kind of have flavor, they are call heirloom tomatoes, I usually buy those.

> They used to be small, but intensely flavored, and ranging from very sweet to slightly sour.

The most delicious strawberries I have ever had, were wild strawberries. They were very smaller, about the size of a raspberry or smaller and would find them the woods in Eastern Europe when we went to pick mushrooms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragaria_vesca

Come to seattle, try the Steak Salad at the Brooklyn. It's an iceberg wedge salad, with steak (hopefully that part was obvious). It's great.

This seems an impractical suggestion, at best. To spend $450 and fly 2000 miles, to then spend $21 on a lunch-menu salad. Made with iceberg lettuce. Instead of any of the fresh oysters on that menu that I cannot get at home.

That recipe seems to be for disappointment.

If the only way to redeem an otherwise boring and useless chunk of iceberg lettuce is to put better foods on top of it, like steak, why not just throw out the lettuce and eat the other foods instead?

Can you suggest any use for iceberg lettuce that I can test at home that would not be vastly improved by either leaving the iceberg out, or substituting Romaine, Bibb, or leaf lettuce in its place?

What use do you have for romaine, bibb, or leaf lettuce that doesn't involve putting better foods on top of it?

Now that you mention it, none. They're all just better than iceberg.

Green cabbage is the lowest vegetable on the hierarchy that I'll actually eat by itself. Though even with that, I sometimes put a red cabbage leaf on top of it.

Also, FWIW, the lettuce wrap version of a jimmy johns sandwich is done with Iceberg. Works really well.

American lettuce mixes are actually pretty unique for how tasteless they are compared to the availability of edible greens in nature. If you were to make a salad of, say, arugula, endive, radicchio, and various leafy herbs like basil and oregano, you'd have quite the taste sensation.

Add a simple vinaigrette to that, and tell me when to show up for dinner.

Not sure what your definition of lettuce is. All greens or just something like iceberg? If you want taste, then eat Arugula... loads of flavor. Arugula and spinach are probably the two main greens I consume.

The lettuce readily available in American grocery stores doesn't have much taste, yes. But try some fresh Laitue, Bibb, Mâche, Endives or Arugula. There's a world of flavor in lettuce but as with most other things here we have a abundance of good-looking, large, bland lettuce.

That's largely a problem in the US. All produce looks really good, but are all noticeably bland when compared to produce you can find in other countries.

Its like tomatoes. Store bought tomatoes taste bland. Big difference than growing your own in the backyard. Juicy and thick!

What's with the American specifier? We have Iceberg lettuce in Europe too and it's just as shit. It's the cheapest so it's everywhere.

My grandparents would always tell me it was one of the few fresh vegetables widely available in 1950s America. Forget ripe tomatoes, let alone chives - you got a mound of iceberg lettuce with boiled eggs (them coming from the cuisine of the Punjab no less).

Organic produce from local growers, if you're lucky to have a grocery store or farmers market near you selling the stuff, is simply incredible. Even the lettuce is delicious with nothing on it.

I just spent winter away from my usual SF bay area haunts and have had to shop at a grocery store more along the lines of a Safeway with a small selection of overpriced corporate organics on a little island in the produce department. This stuff is maybe slightly better than the conventional produce sold alongside it, it's pretty awful, and really helps me appreciate why most of the public doesn't seem to see any difference with organic vs. conventional outside of the price.

It really is an exceptional privilege to have access to quality organic produce in the USA.

Agreed. Once I discovered it I realized that tomatoes from the farmer's market might as well have been a completely different fruit from the tomatoes at the grocery store as the taste difference was that striking. I went from being pretty indifferent about tomatoes to them being my favorite fruit/vegetable.

Just in the last couple of years I have noticed the same with lettuce that I have been gifted from a neighbor's garden. I think I missed my window for planting it this year but plan to next year.

Have you tried fresh spinach instead of lettuce in your salad? I like it a lot, it tastes better. There are also other greens, rocket is quite popular in Europe. We also eat ramsoms in the spring - it tastes like garlic but has a fainter taste without the garlic stink.

Spinach isn't much better[1].

[1] https://www.medicaldaily.com/e-coli-contamination-found-7-sp...

But spinach can be cooked and still taste decent, so it has that on most lettuce.

I do like spinach more. I was thinking mostly of romaine lettuce.

Salad is an excuse to eat dressing.

Exactly! I and think if veggies had a more intense flavor, nobody would feel the need to add any dressing. Maybe oil, salt, and a bit of vinegar. But if the bulk of the salad is romaine lettuce, then without dressing is like eating crunchy water.

Thats like saying french fries are an excuse for eating ketchup or other condiment. You would never eat/drink salad dressing by itself.

Have you ever had woodstock dressing, tho? Because I was just thinking to myself for the millionth time earlier today about how I would TOTALLY drink a glass of it/eat it as a soup if it wasn't, y'know, 100 calories for 2 tablespoons or whatever.

Sorry not sorry.

(Annie's makes it but it's almost impossible to find in stores, so here's the recipe if you're a fan of umami flavors: https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=698... )

Yeah, drinking it is way easier /s

But by adding dressing you've increased the amount of fat in your salad 1000%…

I think the McDonald's ceasar salad has more calories than the big Mac.

There's no caesar salad on McDonald's US menu right now, but last time they offered one, it was 440 calories including grilled chicken, dressing and croutons. A Big Mac is 540. They did once offer a kale and caesar salad with crispy chicken that hit 730 calories with dressing in Canada.

But that's only if you squirt out all the dressing into the salad, which is an absurd amount of dressing.

Interesting, thanks. Close, though!

People don't eat more veggies, because (1) The people forget about them and then they go bad, thus instilling a mental stigma about veggies, and (2) food deserts.

Cut the lettuce before serving. Use chopsticks instead of forks, which after you are accustomed to chopsticks are frankly ridiculously barbaric implements. I am western but I loathe eating many things with blunt knives and clunky forks. Learn to appreciate the texture and color of food, not just the taste.

I do like chopsticks. Especially for kimchi, I can eat and ungodly amount of that very quickly. And I use it for other foods as well. Never quite got used to eating rice with chopsticks though, end up getting frustrated and switch to a fork after some time.

American grocery store veggies taste exactly the same as any other industrialized nation that participates in a globalized food chain.

Cabbage? But not lettuce? You can shred the lettuce all the same.

Yeah I find cabbage has a stronger flavor than romaine lettuce.

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