Lettuce problems

[ChocolateCinderToffee]

Has anyone else had this problem?

I've just spent twenty minutes laboriously removing greenfly from a little gem lettuce, bought in M&S. I had a similar problem with two from (I think) Sainsbury's, about a month ago - one of them had greenfly in and the other had been well chewed by something else, not sure what but there were loads of little black blobs, maybe slugs?

Prior to this, I can't remember the last time I had lettuces infested like this. The odd greenfly maybe, but nothing that required me to go over every single leaf twice and wash it under a running tap.

Anyone know why this might be? I love salad and eat it a lot but this is yuck.

I don't know but I had a gardener friend who always advised me look for the leafy veg that had holes in the leaves, his theory was there was less bad spray on these as bugs were still able to live and eat them!

The crops suffered a lot in our drought, so maybe they are having to use alternative suppliers from elsewhere. Ones which don't appear to use as much pesticide.

I’ve not had this but I’m in Scotland where we haven’t had drought, but I don’t know where our lettuce grows. But I bet @Cotopaxi is right.

I have found this lately from
different supermarkets- literally covered in little green bugs

Gawd I get these lettuces a lot but never paid much attention. If they are green I might have not noticed! I do peel each leaf off and check for dirt but I'm still worried! I suppose it's good they're not using loads of Roundup or whatever pesticides.

I hate this so much and really puts me off eating lettuce. M&S lettuce every single time has these black little bug things on them even on the day of purchase - ughh disgusting! Is lettuce safe to eat when you find these bugs on it??

How are you washing the lettuce? Are you literally picking each greenfly off or submerging the leaves in salted water?

we always had this problem growing up with lettuces from the garden. My mum used to soak the leaves in a bowl of very cold water for a while before washing them. I think the idea was that it kills all the bugs and they float off.
She was fastidious with it because we would have refused to ever each salad again if we had found a bug!

I wondered if it was the warm weather helping little bugs survive and the lack of rain not washing it off on the plants in the fields. A double whammy of bugs thriving. Celery seems to have the same problem as well

I’m sure it’s not going to harm you to eat them, it’s just a bit 🤢

I’m rinsing under a thin trickle of running water.

Soak the leaves in sink of water with salt added, after 10 mins or so rinse them off, the salt kills the bugs and anything left should just wash off. Worked in a restaurant in my youth and this is always how we prepped lettuce leaves.

@marylou25 describes how to effectively wash lettuce and kill any insects, etc. Adding salt to the water is key. Once you've washed the leaves use a salad spinner to remove the excess water. If you don't have one then a couple of tea towels will work, but they not to mush the leaves up. It's annoying to find insects on salad, but we're so used to everything being sanitised and wrapped I think we've lost sight of this being completely normal - unless it states, "washed and ready to use" on the bag.

For those who have explained how to remove insects, thank you but I already knew this. However given that there were at least 100 greenfly on this lettuce, I wouldn't trust this method alone.