Lettuce : from field to plate via the Floor

What, you ask, could be more traditional or normal than eating a lettuce? Quite right, but for the restaurant owner preparing it, or the consumer eating it plain with just a dash of oil and vinegar or accompanied, do they know that this lettuce is exemplary in its freshness? Do they know that the time taken to go from the field in Ile-de-France where the lettuce was cut ‘fresh’ to the plate is even shorter than for fish, between 12 and 18 hours? Let’s track this reference product in terms of image, from field to plate.

A short story about a shoot

While still small, just a few centimetres long, the lettuce shoot is ball planted in sandy ground preferably, to make the producer’s work easier, from early February to early September. On the plains of Chailly-en-Bière, Milly-la-Forêt or Montesson, it is then left to grow (vegetation time), for thirty to seventy-five days, depending on the season.
Maturity and families. After much care and attention and irrigation to order, our lettuce now measures about thirty centimetres in diameter and weighs between 500 and 900 grams. In Ile-de-France, where it was grown, it is usually from the lettuce family, plain lettuce (Lactuca sativa), Butterhead, Batavia, oak leaf, romaine or red lolo lettuce; it may be green, red, blonde or golden, with many shades in between. It is now ready to travel to a table at the best restaurants or a family’s dinner table.

Cut and packed

At dawn, the producers come and ‘haul the lettuces out of bed’. Armed with knives, they cut and dress them to remove any damaged, yellow or unsightly leaves. A rigorous selection process is done at the same time; less beautiful or spotted lettuces are immediately eliminated, resulting in a very high quality (the lettuce’s weight, quality and freshness are the criteria imposed). Once selected, our lettuce is then packed by the six or dozen, depending on buyers’ needs. Comfortably installed in a crate, a good rinse with clean water to keep them fresh and crisp completes this awakening, so the great gastronomic adventure can begin !

Ready, go, tracked !

Every parcel is labelled so our lettuce can be thoroughly traced; this is known as traceability. On green labelling for first category and yellow for second category, the buyer can see the producer’s name, the type of lettuce (plain lettuce, for instance), the regional origin (Ile-de-France for example) and the category. Since January 2005, consumers can track the entire lifecycle (chain) of a lettuce thanks to European directive 178-2000.
All the parcels are placed on pallets and stacked in refrigerated lorries, where the temperature is kept between 1 and 2 degrees with a very high hygrometry (nearly 100%). Actually, freshness is assured by controlled core cooling and transportation under optimum temperature and hygrometry conditions. By now, it is six or seven o’clock in the morning.
The work is run on a just-in-time principle all week long; the producers’ main motivation is to supply buyers with quality and freshness, rapidly. The lettuces will be just a few hours old whether intended for restaurants or consumers’ shopping baskets !

No sooner arrived than delivered

As Ile-de-France is close to the Rungis International Market, transportation time is relatively short (one hour). The lorries arrive at the producers’ floor for fruit and vegetables, where buyers can purchase lettuces. This has taken less than four hours. Usually, the buyers have given their order, the producers’ lorries are unloaded and the buyers take delivery of the goods. If you visit a fresh market in the Ile-de-France region, any lettuces for sale were still in the ground a few hours before. The freshness is therefore optimal and all that remains if for the consumer to enjoy them. The same is true for restaurants, which now have an ultra fresh product to accompany their dishes.

Lettuce is a vegetable with a thousand nutritional and dietary virtues

Taste and nutritious properties are obviously important characteristics for this mass consumption product with numerous virtues. The diversity of lettuce varieties provides an immense palette of taste and aromas for your enjoyment. Whether acid, bitter, sweet, mild or crunchy, lettuces have taste. An important criterion in any restaurant or consumer’s choice is the tenderness, texture or consistency. Lettuces have many benefits and play an active role in covering daily micro-nutriment requirements by supplying a wide range of minerals, trace elements (potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium are the principal constituents along with iron, zinc and manganese) and vitamins C, B, E and pro-vitamin A. They have a high water and dietary fibre content (1.5%) with few sugars (0.9%).
To accompany dishes, as decoration or ornament, on its own or mixed in a salad, lettuce is very common in everyday consumption. Restaurants and consumers may freely compose recipes with this vegetable, for a healthy, fresh diet .

« The perfect lettuce »

Crispness when cut, freshness, sorting, colours and sanitary standards represent the essential four criteria to produce a lettuce of optimum quality and freshness. The crispness of the leaves (rigidity) is the proof that the lettuce is still alive. This crispness is preserved even after the cut by maintaining conditions of optimum cold (1 to 2 degrees) and hygrometry (almost 100%) at each stage, from cut to plate.
The sorting is an important stage in the chain. Indeed, this is principally the moment when damaged leaves or lettuces in poor condition (poor growth or infected by a disease) are removed and kept out of the chain leading to the consumer.
The freshness is maintained by respecting temperature and hydrometric conditions, during storage and transport. Core cooling just after the cut optimises freshness. The qualitative tracking of the lettuce is also optimised and very strict because of the sanitary standards applying, particularly on the maximum residue limits per product and the amount of nitrates in milligrams per kilogramme.