Writer Dave Schilling says outbreak makes healthy eating feel impossible
For Dave Schilling, a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist, the decision to adopt a healthier diet paid off: after a nutritionist recommended cutting carbs and emphasizing leafy greens, he lost 40 pounds, improved his cholesterol and blood pressure, and said he felt “less like a glistening slug.”
Then the Cyclospora outbreak hit.
“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 – in the sense that fresh produce is now waging battle with our stomachs,” Schilling wrote in a commentary published July 25 in The Guardian. He described the parasite’s signature symptom — explosive diarrhea — as causing “bowel movements that would make Pompeii look like a gender-reveal party.”
Schilling wrote that cyclospora may spread through human feces entering irrigation systems and cannot be eliminated through standard agricultural sanitation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been unable to identify the source of the contamination, he noted, pointing to a false-positive test that briefly pointed to the supplier Taylor Farms before the agency retracted it.
“I’m terrified because now I don’t know what to eat,” Schilling wrote. “Sure, I could order a salad for lunch, but I also might have to move all my worldly possessions into the bathroom.”
Schilling, who said he previously relied on fast food and pizza during periods of intense writing, described the outbreak as forcing him to weigh the health benefits of fresh produce against the risk of infection. He noted that a 2025 CDC program reduced the number of foodborne illnesses it actively tracked from six to two, removing cyclosporiasis from the list and leaving only salmonella and E. coli.
“To match the voracious demand for sustenance and maximize profits, every step of the food-production process has been degraded,” Schilling wrote. “The problem isn’t with me or you or anyone else who relies on the safety of our food supply. It’s on the companies and the government agencies who manufacture and regulate what we eat.”
Rather than declaring he has already abandoned his diet, Schilling said he is “starting to wonder if I should pivot back” to his previous eating habits of “fried dough and cheese cones.”
“At this juncture, it feels less like my tax dollars go to securing our food and more like they’re going directly into my toilet,” he wrote.