It is quite possible 2020 will be remembered as a turning point in American history, a moment after which the country became irretrievably different from what it had been before.

Yes, that’s right, this could be the year consumption of romaine and other leaf lettuce finally surpasses that of head lettuce, which is mostly iceberg lettuce.

Before then, sturdy, compact iceberg heads had a big advantage over other lettuces in ease of transport and use. After that, not so much. As Burkhard Bilger described in a 2004 New Yorker article, a protege of the great California chef (and iceberg-lettuce-detractor) Alice Waters named Todd Koons seized upon the new technology as a way to deliver mesclun and mache to the masses in supermarkets across the country. You can learn a lot about lettuce from reading The New Yorker. Read more