MINNEAPOLIS — Seventy-six people have now been sickened across sixteen states by alfalfa sprouts, and six of them went to the hospital, and the sprout in question is a single pale green leaf that weighs less than a paperclip. This is the smallest food in the American grocery store, and it has now beaten sixteen states, which is a score nobody wants to be on.

The sprout is not a meal. The sprout is a garnish. It sits on a sandwich as a decoration, the way a person puts a sprout on a sandwich because the sandwich looked like it needed something green and the sprout is the greenest thing in the deli case. A sprout is what you put on a sandwich when you want the sandwich to look healthy. It has no flavor worth mentioning. It has no texture worth mentioning. It is a leaf that has been grown for the purpose of sitting on top of other food, and it has now produced more confirmed cases than most things in the store that actually contain calories.

The outbreak is traced to Everything Sprouts of Minneapolis, and the recall covers 5-oz plastic containers, which is the size of a sprout container a person buys thinking they are buying a garnish and turns out to be buying a vector. The company recalled the sprouts on August 22. The case count has kept climbing since, which means the sprouts were eaten after the recall, which means people are still putting sprouts on sandwiches in sixteen states, and the sprout is still winning.

"I put a sprout on everything," said Dale Kowalski, a deli customer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who has now stopped putting a sprout on everything. "It was the green on the plate. It wasn't the food. I don't even know what it tastes like. I think it tastes like a lawn."

THE SPROUT SCOREBOARD

  • Confirmed cases: 76, across 16 states.
  • Hospitalizations: 6.
  • The food: A single alfalfa sprout, roughly the weight of a paperclip.
  • Its role in the meal: Decoration.
  • Its role in the outbreak: Everything.

The gastroenterologist quoted in the report said sprouts are grown in warm, humid conditions, which is the same environment a person would choose for a terrarium, and the sprout has simply been living in a terrarium for its whole life and then got put on a sandwich. Nobody considered the terrarium. The terrarium is the problem. The sprout is not a food that people argue about; it is a food people ignore, and ignoring it is what has produced sixteen states.

At press time, the deli counter at a Kroger in Toledo had removed the sprouts and left the clamshell-shaped gap in the case, and a woman stood looking at the gap for a full minute before buying a sandwich with no green on it. She said she missed the sprout. She said she did not know what to put on the sandwich now. At press time, nobody had an answer for her.