Streeter: If you shop local and love science, you, too, can avoid explosive diarrhea

I once asked the owner of a farm-to-table restaurant — when that movement was all the rage — why the concept mattered. He smiled and said something unexpected.

“You know what your grandparents called ‘farm to table?’” he asked. “They called it ‘food.’”

Back in the day, before supermarkets, prepackaged food and the ability to ship out-of-season produce across the country, you ate what was local, seasonal and grown around the corner for dinner. You trusted it because you knew where it came from. Another plus? You probably didn’t ingest imported poop lettuce that gave you explosive diarrhea.

“It passes through a lot less hands,” explained farmer Jason Gross of Hillside Meadow Farm, about 40 miles away in Glenville, Pennsylvania, as shoppers walked through the colorful produce at his family’s stand at the Fells Point Farmers Market last weekend. “And it’s fresher.”

The recent outbreak of cyclosporiasis, likely traced to iceberg lettuce grown in Mexico, can cause an extended bout of that aforementioned violent and uncontrolled poopage. This, of course, is the season when you’re drawn to fresh produce, so it’s not great that this all makes me want to tuck into a bag of Cheetos. At least I know that’s supposed to be bad for me.

This highly unpleasant situation is a light-bulb moment. It’s best, if possible, to buy local produce that is less likely to be contaminated during outbreaks tied to large national chains because it’s sourced from local growers with smaller distribution patterns, according to Consumer Reports. (I get most of my fruits and veggies delivered from a nearby CSA, or community-supported agriculture organization.)

But buying from farmers markets and CSAs can only do so much. We live in a time when the federal government is showing where its priorities lie regarding our food safety system. I am not a scientist, nor do I play one on TV, but I feel better about what I eat knowing that foodborne illnesses are being better monitored and studied.

The CDC team that monitored cyclospora outbreaks was reduced from 11 people to three in the Department of Government Efficiency’s 2025 housecleaning, according to Wired. That same year, the current administration cut $12 billion in public health grants for states, including those used to track infectious diseases. Wow, would that ever come in handy right now!

There is no proof that the outbreak would not have happened without these staffing and financial cuts. But it is concerning when the apparatus to more quickly track and implement long-term changes for this exact type of situation is dismantled.

“When you know that there is a certain infectious disease, you know that you are reducing the risk by buying from a farm in your hometown where cyclospora is not present,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security and an infectious disease physician.

When the outbreak was initially announced, concerned shoppers like me were indeed asking vendors about the provenance of their produce, and I threw away the few grocery-store vegetables I had. But then the FDA identified the source of the outbreak as iceberg lettuce from the Taylor Farms brand, whose bagged salads I used to live on. Then the government backtracked and said the tested lettuce had triggered a false positive. And then they came back and said, “It probably is about the lettuce, though.”

So, maybe don’t buy their lettuce anymore?

“Some people last week were asking what was locally grown,” said farmers market vendor Jonathan Albright, whose family farm is in Phoenix. He reminded me that cyclosporiasis isn’t the first microorganism to wind its icky way through the food supply — remember listeria and avian influenza?

The key is safety, and Albright said it’s a good idea to wash your produce before eating it, whether or not there’s an outbreak “because someone may have touched it and put it back.” Ewww.

Adalja said there’s less widespread panic when the source of an outbreak is identified, which is sort of the case here, I guess. I just know Taylor Farms doesn’t have to worry about me loading up on their products anymore.

Besides reducing the risk of contamination from afar, buying local also helps support our neighbors. “I prefer to do business with local people,” Gross said. That was the sentiment of so many of the shoppers at the Fells Point Farmers Market, who told me they felt safer buying there, too.

“It’s less of a concern for me here,” said Baltimore’s Maria Kravchenko, weighing fruit at the Hillside Meadow Farm stand. “And I like sticking it to big business.”

Extending a strong finger to The Man and avoiding explosive diarrhea? Sounds like a win-win.