Iceberg lettuce is junk food. If you’re about to eat iceberg lettuce, you might as well reach for a candy bar instead. Comparably low nutritional value. In Dante’s food pyramid, they’re both in the ninth circle of sinner foods. Dinner for thieves and unbaptized babies.
This is how I thought of iceberg lettuce. This is how I was raised to think of iceberg lettuce. Kind of like eating garbage. Its delightful crunchiness belied its wanton and hedonistic provenance. You’re eating iceberg lettuce when you could be eating spinach leaves? Or red leaf lettuce? Or even a Boston bib or Romaine?
Slut.
Only here’s what I have discovered: Iceberg lettuce is aaaamazing. Not for its own caloric or health (non)value, but as a conduit. An enabler of vegetables. The wheels on the mass transit of bounty. A vehicle for other, more healthful vegetables.
Where I would have zero salads, because gorramit I just can’t keep up with the stupid short life cycles and high maintenance needs of organic leafy munchables, iceberg lettuce understands me. It understands that I need to chuck it in the fridge and kinda forget about it until I need it. Iceberg lettuce doesn’t mind neglect. Iceberg lettuce don’t give a damn.
And then, when it’s lunch or peckish time, BAM! you just pull out your iceberg lettuce and add all your actually good vegetables to it. Maybe even some of those higher maintenance greens if they’re still alive (and not limply draped about your fridge like so many delicate ladies on their fainting couches). Load that shit up. Chop up 5 different kinds of veggies, slap ’em in with the iceberg (which is still clean and crunchy and ready for service… because it is undead), and voila! Salad.
And guess what? You just ate 5 more veggies than zero. All thanks to iceberg lettuce. Iceberg lettuce giving you a locker room slap on the butt and saying: “I got this one Hon. You just go grab some bell peppers and dressing.”
In conclusion: Question everything, and take allies wherever you can find them.
Amen.