I consider lettuce a Good Thing to Eat, nutritionally speaking. Not iceberg lettuce, of course, but varieties with a good supply of vitamin A and other nutrients. So I try to keep some in the fridge at all times. Since I don't want the inconvenience of washing and cutting lettuce to discourage me from making a salad, I often buy pre-washed, bagged salad from the supermarket. I have some misgivings about bagged salad, although I'm not sure why. Here are some of the pros and cons as I see them. I hope readers will weigh in.
Cost
This is a no-brainer in favor of head lettuce. At Shoprite, Whole Foods and A&P stores in suburban New Jersey and New York, bagged salad generally costs between $2.50 and $3.99 for a 5- to 10-ounce bag, or $5.99 to $6.99 for an 11- to 16-ounce clamshell. That works out to somewhere between $5.99 and $12.67 per pound. Not surprisingly, the nutritious, tasty varieties I prefer tend to be at the high end of the price-per-pound range. For comparison, today I bought two whole heads of lettuce, 0.91 pounds of red leaf at $1.79/lb. and 0.49 pounds of romaine at $1.29/lb. That's well over a pound of lettuce for a total of $2.36. Even after discarding the cores and a few outer leaves, it works out to about $2.00 per pound.
Convenience
In this category, bagged salad wins hands-down. Just open the bag and throw the lettuce in a bowl. Whole lettuce needs to be washed and cut. Today, I pre-washed my lettuce so I won't be discouraged from making a salad on another day when I have less time or motivation. I separated the leaves, swished them around in a bowl of cold water (two batches, each rinsed twice), and dried them in my salad spinner (two batches). The cleaned leaves went into a gallon-size zipper bag with a dry paper towel. The process took about 10 minutes. Although sometimes I cut the leaves into bite-size pieces before bagging, I didn't do that today, so I'll have to spend another few minutes on that task when I'm ready to make a salad. Not the end of the world, but I really don't relish spending 10 minutes once or twice a week processing lettuce.
Shelf life
This topic confuses me a bit. I always assumed that bagged salad goes bad faster than whole lettuce, even whole lettuce that has been washed and cut at home. And often it does, but not always. I've seen bagged salad become wilted and slimy within a day of opening, yet I've also seen it last for a week after opening, even beyond it's "best by" date. Whole lettuce that I've washed and cut generally stays fresh for a week. Interestingly, although it eventually loses its crispness and turns brown, it doesn't go bad in the same gross, slimy way the bagged salad does. I guess head lettuce is the winner in this category, but the results aren't entirely clear.
Quality and variety
One advantage of bagged salad is that you can get a mixture of many types of lettuce. Some of the spring mix products are a delightful blend of several kinds of baby lettuce, baby spinach and herbs. Some products are available with shredded carrots and cabbage mixed in. Bagged salad makes it easy to get a variety of high-nutrient, tasty greens in one package.
Vague qualms
So what worries me about bagged salad? I sometimes wonder if manufacturers are taking the lettuce that's about to go bad, trimming it, and packaging what's left as bagged salad. If it's true, is it a good thing or a bad thing? It's good if it prevents waste, but not so good if I'm getting a product that's past its peak of flavor and nutrition. Then there's the plastic packaging that ends up in the waste stream, or if we're lucky, gets recycled. And there's a nagging sense that I'm taking a shortcut instead of preparing fresh food from scratch. But is that wrong if it means I eat more and better lettuce?
What do you think?
I see both pros and cons to bagged salad. I don't know much about how it's grown, shipped and processed. And I don't know how it compares to head lettuce in terms of nutrition, pesticides, risk of contamination, or the conditions for farm and processing workers. I'd love to hear from readers.
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