Getting to know arugula and chard
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The Kochers of New Cumberland say the spinach recall didn’t change their buying habits much. From left are Doug, Jacob, 5, Gabriel, 3, and Kirsten Kocher. (Tatiana Zarnowski/The Sentinel)
Fans of fresh bagged spinach haven’t gone cold turkey on veggies, although many are still shying away from Popeye’s favorite food.
Local stores returned fresh spinach to store shelves in the last week or so, and although sales are increasing, they haven’t returned to where they were before widely publicized E. coli outbreaks prompted a spinach recall.
“We’ve just started this past weekend putting fresh spinach back on the shelf,” says Scott Karns, president of Karns Foods. “The sales have been slow on the spinach.”
Both Karns and Giant Food have seen a hike in sales of other bagged and loose leafy greens.
“There was definitely a trade-off to other products,” Karns says.
People even bought more of veggies that don’t normally go in salads.
“Cooking vegetables such as collard, Swiss chard and beets are all performing better than at this same time last year, telling us that some people are substituting those produce items for the raw salad items,” Giant spokeswoman Tracy Pawelski says.
The food service industry has been slower to reintroduce spinach into salads and other foods.
Robert Poe, co-owner of La Luz cafe in downtown Carlisle, hasn’t put a popular Italian wedding soup that contains cooked spinach back on the cafe’s menu after he yanked it during the outbreak.
“We just want to make sure the whole thing runs its course,” especially since litigious people could use the E. coli outbreak to target restaurants, he says.
Melissa Kibbe of Roxbury works for Roxbury Holiness Camp, which operates a conference center that serves food.
“I don’t think we have started doing the spinach again for the camp,” she says.
The E. coli outbreak inspired small changes in people’s eating and buying habits.
Doug Kocher now finds himself washing ready-to-eat salads.
“I never used to think twice about washing the stuff in the bags,” the New Cumberland man says.
He and his wife, Kirsten, don’t usually buy bagged spinach. But they do eat frozen spinach in quiche and cooked as a side dish.
Kirsten Kocher says she hasn’t been able to find frozen spinach in food stores since the recall was lifted.
Kibbe doesn’t buy bagged spinach either, but she does eat fresh spinach on salad bars. She will eat it again when it comes back, she says.
“There could be something in anything that we eat,” she points out. “I don’t think I would be funny about it.”
Most people don’t think much about the quality of their food, Kocher believes. “There’s this blind faith that there’s not going to be a problem.”
Poe says no one has questioned him about whether the cafe serves spinach in its salads — though it doesn’t.
“People are not as cautious” when they eat out, he says.
Meanwhile, some stores and spinach distributors have gone out of their way to boast that their spinach doesn’t come from the contaminated areas in California.
Bags of Verdelli spinach at Giant have “East Coast grown” printed prominently on the front.
When the Kochers were at Oak Grove Farms recently, “they had a big sign above (the spinach) that said, ‘The spinach was grown on this farm,’” Doug Kocher says.
