Taco Bell is under federal investigation in America’s great diarrhea outbreak and I have never felt more vindicated

Taco Bell is being investigated by federal and state health officials over whether it played a role in one of the largest cyclosporiasis outbreaks in American history, according to a Washington Post report. Cyclosporiasis, for those blessed enough not to know, is a parasitic infection whose defining symptom the CDC describes as watery diarrhea with “frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements.”

More than 4,000 people sick. Thirty-four states. Michigan alone has over 2,600 cases, the largest outbreak in the state’s history.

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And the trail may lead to Taco Bell.

I want to be clear about the facts before I do what I came here to do. No official link to Taco Bell has been confirmed. The FDA has not announced a recall involving the chain. Michigan’s health department says lettuce or salad greens are a “potential source” and notes that some sick people never ate at Taco Bell at all. Detroit-area locations pulled lettuce, cilantro, onion, pico de gallo, and guacamole as a precaution.

That is the responsible paragraph. Now here is the honest one.

I have been warning people about Taco Bell my entire life

I have hated Taco Bell since before I could legally drive to one. Not casually. Foundationally.

This is a company that looked at one of the great cuisines on Earth, centuries of Mexican cooking, real masa, real barbacoa, food made by human hands with actual love, and said, what if we ran it through a caulk gun instead. What if beef was a texture. What if a quesadilla and a burrito and a chalupa were all the same five ingredients rearranged like a losing Scrabble rack.

And America ate it. For decades. We let a fiberglass bell convince an entire nation that this is what a taco is. Kids in this country genuinely believe crunchy shells and beef spackle are Mexican food. That is a cultural crime with no statute of limitations.

So no, I am not shocked that when investigators went looking for the source of a nationwide parasite situation, one of the doors they knocked on had a purple bell over it. I am not saying they did it. The officials aren’t saying they did it. I am saying that if you told 12-year-old me that Taco Bell would one day be federally investigated in connection with a mass explosive-diarrhea event, I would have said “obviously” and gone back to my Eagles cards.

Some of us saw the fourth meal for what it was.

The Taco Bell investigation, by the numbers

The CDC confirmed 1,645 cases between May 1 and July 13, nearly double the count from four days earlier, and says more than 5,100 additional cases are still being reviewed. Case totals are running roughly four times higher than the same date last year. The parasite spreads through produce contaminated by dirty irrigation water, and past outbreaks of this size are rare, one of the only recent comparisons is a 2019 basil outbreak that sickened 2,400 people.

The good news, if you need some: nobody has died, it’s treatable with antibiotics, and California has all of one to 10 cases with no spike. Philadelphia, as of this writing, remains free to make its own bad food decisions, which around here at least involve a griddle and some dignity.

Health officials say to buy whole heads of lettuce instead of bagged mixes, strip the outer leaves, and wash everything.

Or, and hear me out, you could simply not eat lettuce that arrives via drive-thru window at 1 a.m. There’s a Mexican spot in every neighborhood in this city run by people who actually know what a taco is. Go give them your money.

The Bell had a long run. Let the record show some of us never rang it.