{"id":432,"date":"2026-07-17T16:08:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=432"},"modified":"2026-07-17T16:08:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:08:46","slug":"america-has-explosive-diarrhea-is-donald-trump-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=432","title":{"rendered":"America Has Explosive Diarrhea. Is Donald Trump to Blame?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nick Florko doesn\u2019t want to brag or anything, but more than a year ago he wrote an article that has come to seem prescient. Its title: \u201cNow Is Not the Time to Eat Bagged Lettuce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Democrats Have a Process for Replacing Graham Platner. It\u2019s Controversial.<\/a><\/p>\n

Florko, a staff writer at the Atlantic, made that pronouncement long before the multistate outbreak of Cyclospora cayetanensis<\/em>, a parasite that is associated with explosive diarrhea and has spread across 34 states and counting. Back then, he was focused on leafy greens because they\u2019re the most common cause of foodborne illness, and he worried that the Trump administration was weakening the U.S. food safety system.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t yet know what\u2019s causing this outbreak of cyclosporiasis, but it\u2019s apparent that lettuce is suspect. (Taco Bell specifically is being investigated, or scapegoated, by the White House.) Cyclospora<\/em> has also been known to hang around in raspberries and cilantro. A key thing is that it\u2019s tough, if not impossible, to wash off. And you can ingest the parasite and not feel the impact of it for weeks.<\/p>\n

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Luckily, the illness resolves with antibiotics, and it\u2019s not fatal. But symptoms can last for weeks. \u201cIt seems to go in waves,\u201d Florko said. \u201cYou get really sick, you think you\u2019re fine, you go about your day, you get sick again, and it keeps going. You keep riding that wave until you get it treated.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a recent episode of What Next, Mary Harris spoke to Florko about Cyclospora<\/em> summer: how the parasite spreads, how much faith to place in our country\u2019s public health infrastructure, and whether you can actually eat that lettuce. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Mary Harris: So what is this \u201cexplosive diarrhea\u201d bug? What is Cyclospora<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nick Florko:<\/strong> It\u2019s a parasite that is spread by human feces, specifically feces that is left out in the environment to mature and gets infectious. If it touches food, that food gets contaminated, and if you eat the food, you get explosive diarrhea.<\/p>\n

How is a pile of poop sitting out for two weeks and then getting on the food? Can you draw me a picture here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a microscopic parasite\u2014<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not necessarily a pile of poop.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. A water source gets contaminated in some way, and that water is then used to irrigate a field. It\u2019s a small amount of poop, and it gets onto the food. That\u2019s most likely how this happened. It\u2019s not something you can see.<\/p>\n

It was only recently that this parasite was found to be domestic, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly. That\u2019s the part of this that, as a science nerd, I\u2019m the most interested in. We used to think that this parasite was endemic to tropical regions. Then we started to see cases that were homegrown here. We still don\u2019t know why that is. We don\u2019t have a long history with this parasite\u2014we discovered it in the 1990s, as I understand it. That was when the first outbreaks we were noticing happened. Science is still catching up here, and Cyclospora<\/em> is harder to track than other foodborne outbreaks.<\/p>\n

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