I tried so hard to become a salad eater. Now cyclospora is sending me back to burgers | Dave Schilling

5 hours ago 8

While war and conflict seem to be raging across the planet, the greatest weapon of mass destruction afflicting the United States today is, apparently, a salad – in the sense that fresh produce is now waging battle with our stomachs thanks to the cyclospora parasite. Cyclospora has infested an unknown amount of our food, causing thousands to suffer bowel movements that would make Pompeii look like a gender-reveal party.

This is a tragedy for everyone except the fat cats at Big Toilet. Cyclospora may be spread through human feces getting into irrigation systems in the food supply due to poor worker hygiene. It can’t be killed through usual agricultural sanitation processes. The best we can do is throw all that cilantro away and start from scratch. The FDA is scrambling to find the source of the contamination as soon as possible, going as far as to finger the supplier Taylor Farms with a false positive test that they had to sloppily retract as fast as they declared it. I, for one, am trembling, and not because I’m seconds away from expelling parasitic eggs. I’m terrified because now I don’t know what to eat.

A year-and-a-half ago, I was strongly recommended a diet by a kindly nutritionist that banished carbs and emphasized leafy greens. It brought down my cholesterol levels and blood pressure. I lost 40lbs. I’ve never felt less like a glistening slug, slithering through life trying to avoid getting stepped on by someone fitter than me during a vigorous jog.

I’m not a healthy person, by nature. My son, who is addicted to McDonald’s chicken nuggets, caused me to indulge in fast food. If he’s going for yet another Happy Meal, why not a lovely Big Mac for Dad? When I wrote my first book, my only solace in the lonely days and nights of banging on a keyboard for hours was pizza delivery. Circumstances conspired to unlock my latent gluttony, causing every health marker on my chart to turn a sickly shade of red to denote “strong chance of every organ retiring from service all at once”. Personally, I’d like my body to keep working for another few years, so I took the advice from my nutritionist and gained all the benefits.

Unfortunately, the very food I’m meant to eat to stay alive is now a potential threat. Sure, I could order a salad for lunch, but I also might have to move all my worldly possessions into the bathroom. I feel like I’ve stumbled into a Faustian bargain where, for the price of one prolonged bout of digestive emergency, I can have a summer beach body.

I’d love to continue my journey toward dietary harmony, but as this outbreak continues, I’m starting to wonder if I should pivot back to my customary regimen of fried dough and cheese cones. If my food isn’t barbecued or dipped into hot grease, can I even trust it? Cuts to food safety programs at the federal level last year certainly aren’t helping my belief in the propriety of what I put in my mouth. In 2025, a CDC program quietly trimmed the number of foodborne illnesses it tracked from six to just two. One of the four illnesses axed from the program? Cyclosporiasis. Only salmonella and E coli survived the purge, which are at least two of the most famous illnesses. The Q score for salmonella and E coli has got to be Taylor-Swift-Rihanna levels at this point, making the term “going viral” almost literal.

Yes, I know they are actually bacteria. But there’s an entire world of obscure microscopic bugs out there to contend with, and at least for now, we all need to eat food. Worse yet, we all need to eat good food, if such a thing even exists in our mass-produced, industrial culinary world. To match the voracious demand for sustenance and maximize profits, every step of the food-production process has been degraded. Who knows how many microplastics and pesticides are in my system right now, eager to wreak havoc on my internal systems at a moment’s notice? The answer to my food anxiety probably isn’t to subsist on Pop-Tarts and ranch dressing. The damage might be slower than bacteria would cause, but the bill will come due regardless.

The problem isn’t with me or you or anyone else who relies on the safety of our food supply. It’s on the companies and the government agencies who manufacture and regulate what we eat. At this juncture, it feels less like my tax dollars go to securing our food and more like they’re going directly into my toilet.