Two customers eat salads at a McDonalds. Photographer:Andy Shaw/Bloomberg News
Is a salad or a wrap healthy? It depends. You have to check the ingredients. If one of the ingredients is the Cyclospora cayetanensis parasite, then the answer is no.
While few restaurants would knowingly sell Cyclospora salad, this parasite may have made its way into Fresh Express chopped romaine lettuce, which in turn made its way into salads sold at McDonald's. A Cyclospora cayetanensis outbreak has been going on since May and as of August 2 has affected at least 395 people in 15 states, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On July 27, the FDA told Fresh Express that they had found Cyclospora in a romaine lettuce and carrot salad mix that Fresh Express had distributed to McDonald's. One can assume that McDonald's wasn't lovin' that news. Prior to that discovery, McDonald's had already announced that they would voluntarily stop selling salads at potentially affected locations and switch lettuce and carrot suppliers.
Here is a video from The Daily Mail about the outbreak:
McDonald's hasn't been the only business affected by the Fresh Express lettuce. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA's) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued an alert about Caito Foods LLC- distributed beef, pork and poultry salad and wrap products that include Fresh Express lettuce and made it to shelves at Trader Joe's, Kroger and Walgreens. This includes products with “Best By,” “Enjoy by,” Best if Sold By” or “Sell By” dates from July 18 to July 23, 2018.
This segment from TMJ 4, an NBC affiliate in Milwaukee, covers the USDA's warning:
No one wants diarrhea with a wrap or a salad. If you do, you are weird. Cyclospora cayetanensis doesn't just cause run-of-the-mill diarrh
