\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hile 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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\u2019m seconds away from expelling parasitic eggs. I\u2019m terrified because now I don\u2019t know what to eat.<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not a healthy person, by nature. My son, who is addicted to McDonald\u2019s chicken nuggets, caused me to indulge in fast food. If he\u2019s 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 \u201cstrong chance of every organ retiring from service all at once\u201d. Personally, I\u2019d like my body to keep working for another few years, so I took the advice from my nutritionist and gained all the benefits.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the very food I\u2019m 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\u2019ve stumbled into a Faustian bargain where, for the price of one prolonged bout of digestive emergency, I can have a summer beach body.<\/p>\n I\u2019d love to continue my journey toward dietary harmony, but as this outbreak continues, I\u2019m starting to wonder if I should pivot back to my customary regimen of fried dough and cheese cones. If my food isn\u2019t barbecued or dipped into hot grease, can I even trust it? Cuts to food safety programs at the federal level last year certainly aren\u2019t 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<\/em> coli<\/em> survived the purge, which are at least two of the most famous illnesses. The Q score for salmonella and E<\/em> coli<\/em> has got to be Taylor-Swift-Rihanna levels at this point, making the term \u201cgoing viral\u201d almost literal.<\/p>\n Yes, I know they are actually bacteria. But there\u2019s 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\u2019s notice? The answer to my food anxiety probably isn\u2019t to subsist on Pop-Tarts and ranch dressing. The damage might be slower than bacteria would cause, but the bill will come due regardless.<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t with me or you or anyone else who relies on the safety of our food supply. It\u2019s 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\u2019re going directly into my toilet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u2013 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[12788,24990,13873,10312,4558,21009,25063,1854],"class_list":{"0":"post-51409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-burgers","9":"tag-cyclospora","10":"tag-dave","11":"tag-eater","12":"tag-hard","13":"tag-salad","14":"tag-schilling","15":"tag-sending"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}