That Bag of Salad Seems to Go Bad Faster These Days. You're Not Imagining It.

Key points

• Pre-harvest stress from weather and rough handling during high-speed processing create micro-bruises on lettuce leaves, causing them to decay faster.
• The plastic bags for salads use Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), which is fragile. Minor temperature changes during shipping break the "cold chain", upsetting the gas balance and accelerating spoilage.
• Consumers bear the financial brunt of this issue, with households potentially wasting over $100 annually on spoiled salad greens alone.
• While "Best By" dates are a guide, they assume a perfect, unbroken cold chain which is often not the case, making the dates an unreliable indicator of freshness.

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Sources and methodology

Reported from the public datasets below.

• U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - FDA recalls, market withdrawals and safety alerts
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) - FSIS recalls and public health alerts

All sources Foodie Pundit reports from

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