In a culinary saga spanning decades, the rise and fall of iceberg lettuce stand as a testament to changing tastes and market dynamics. Once hailed as an American staple, its dominance waned amidst the proliferation of gourmet greens. Despite a brief resurgence championed by food luminaries, iceberg’s decline persisted, yielding ground to kale and arugula. Now, amidst a cabbage comeback, the lettuce landscape evolves once more, leaving room for new favourites to emerge.
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By Justin Fox
The first two decades of the 21st century saw a revival of culinary interest in iceberg lettuce, an American staple that had lost out to other greens in high-end restaurants and food magazines decades earlier. âIceberg is making something of a comeback,â ventured Julia Reed, a New York Times food writer, in 2003. âThe hipsters are reclaiming it,â wrote Joanne Latimer in Canadian newsmagazine Macleanâs in 2012. âItâs time to admit that iceberg is a superior lettuce,â instructed Helen Rosner in the New Yorker in 2018. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
In 2020, superchef David Chang delivered the apotheosis of the new iceberg creed, a Twitter thread that began:
The wrong opinion he was referring to was a column I had written on the decline of iceberg consumption relative to that of other lettuce. I didnât say iceberg was bad, but I did predict that what the US Department of Agriculture calls per-capita food availability of head lettuce (iceberg and similar âcrispheadsâ) would soon fall behind that of romaine and leaf lettuce.
In the final tweet of his thread, Chang wrote:
Itâs not quite five years later, but data released this month by the USDA shows per-capita retail availability of head lettuce â a figure that is based on production statistics but is widely used as a proxy for consumption â to have fallen to a new low of 9.6 pounds in 2022. Thatâs 2.2 pounds and 19% below the figure for Romaine and leaf lettuce.
Production data from the California Leafy Greens Research Board indicate that icebergâs decline continued in early 2023. Its drop may have accelerated since. âIâm in the fields a lot,â says Tim McAfee, a farmer in the US lettuce heartland of Monterey County, California. âYou can tell that thereâs a lot less iceberg this year even than last year.â
Iceberg lettuce is not going away. It continues to be a fast-food staple, and has its appeal in other contexts â Changâs boosterism inspired my wife and me to make iceberg wedges with blue cheese dressing part of our salad rotation, and weâre not giving that up. But it no longer dominates the American salad landscape and probably never will again. (Chang opted to âvery politely pass on commentingâ on these latest developments, a spokesman emailed.)
The story of icebergâs decline is partly about changing American tastes, and also about the lags and outright disagreement between elite food opinion and supermarket reality. Iceberg consumption held up just fine as tastemakers such as Craig Claiborne and Alice Waters railed against its blandness and lack of nutritional value from the late 1950s onward, yet collapsed in the 2000s, just as talk of a revival began. Internet personality Kim Holderness recently posted a video from the produce section of a supermarket in which she remarked on the proliferation of non-iceberg greens and wondered, âWhen did this happen? When did we get arugula?â In the late Nora Ephronâs lovely 2006 account of her culinary awakening in New York City, âarugula was discoveredâ sometime in 1960s. But in most of the rest of the country, it happened much later than that.
The USDA doesnât break out food availability numbers for arugula, but it has for kale since the mid-1990s. The tough, nutritious green arrived in the foodie consciousness decades ago, but overall US consumption (or at least production; I wouldnât be surprised if kale farmers turn out to have overdone it in 2021 and 2022) has taken off only recently, just as one began to encounter anti-kale screeds in the media.
Supply-side considerations have also played a big role in the changing fortunes of different greens. Iceberg lettuce, introduced by the Burpee seed company in 1894, was bred for long-distance transport. Its compact heads could stand up to being packed in ice and shipped across the country from California, an early success in the nationalization of the market for fresh vegetables. Late in the 20th century, various innovations enabled farmers in California and Arizona (which together account for virtually all commercial US lettuce production) to ship more-delicate greens as well, with pre-washed, pre-packaged salad mixes in particular becoming ubiquitous.
It is in those salad mixes that we can find the likeliest culprit for the decline in iceberg lettuce. Itâs not some fashionable new green youâve never heard of. Itâs cabbage.
To be sure, thereâs not much sign in the above chart of a cabbage revival, just a consumption plateau after decades of decline. But the on-the-ground observation of farmer McAfee, whose Visionary Vegetables LLC grows an ever-shifting variety of greens, is that right now cabbage is booming. The main reason: itâs less expensive to grow, an important consideration with retail lettuce prices up 30% since just before the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. âCabbage is a cheaper commodity,â McAfee says. âIf you look at salad mixes now, theyâre mostly cabbage. I bet 20 to 30% of the head-lettuce market has turned into cabbage.â
Thatâs a big shift, one that salad-mix buyers may eventually revolt against. It also may contain a silver lining of sorts for iceberg fans â if cabbage can make a comeback, anything can.
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