Supermarket salad bags can rarely compete with the wonderful diversity of leaves found on small farms. The former are often made up of only two to four types of leaf (spinach, sweet batavia or butterhead, maybe some rocket and a bitter leaf such as frisée), compared with the incredible range of eight to 12 varieties found in a good farm salad bag. That said, this test did teach me that some brands are starting to include more exotic leaves in their mix.
I awarded points for leaf diversity and, more importantly, flavour (it’s incredible how the same leaf variety tastes so different from one packet to another, from nutrient-dense and alive to bland and flavourless). Freshness is also a crucial factor, of course, as is value for money. Sadly, though, compared with other fresh supermarket products such as strawberries and tomatoes, few brands display much by way of transparency or provenance. Most list, at best, a country of origin, with several offering nothing more than just “red and green lettuce” on the ingredients list, leaving me to try to identify the varieties myself.
