Wednesday, May 09, 2012

1735 Mixed Up Greens

I commented in my last essay about the dandelion and how ubiquitous and how useful it is. I wonder that the agribusiness industry hasn't taken note. Especially with the preponderance of foodies who are both locavores and organic omnivores.
Or have they already? To try to manage a healthy diet, I buy this spring salad mix from Costco. It's organic and comes in one of those clear plastic boxes that's hard to recycle and is poisoning the planet.
But it always seems to hold a different mix of greens. Sometimes it says, "spinach and mixed greens." Other times just "mixed greens."
What a mixed-up bunch it is. There's some recognizable ones, like red lettuce and escarole, but then there's this weird variety of other leaf-like substances.
So I wondered. Is dandelion lurking in there somewhere? They say their greens are pre-washed and ready to eat. Maybe they pre-blanched some to make them more edible. Could be. Some of the spring-mix greens leaves have the same tooth-of-a-lion shape as the dandelion. And some of them are bitter.
Is the giant agribusiness salad mix company slipping in weeds?
I checked the list on the bottom of the box. It says, "The ingredients in each package may vary." They may contain "organic baby lettuces," which could be "red and green romaine, red and green oak leaf, red leaf, lollo rosa, and tango." The box also could have "mizuna, red and green chard, baby spinach, arugula, frisee' and radicchio."
There's no way to tell. Mizuna looks close. But so do some of the others. You gotta wonder though. If pink slime can make it into our beef supply, dandelion could make it into our veggies.
Hmm. I guess if I don't want a titanic tummy I may have to go back to iceburg lettuce.

America ya gotta love it.

No comments: