Are you someone who doesn’t easily warm up to greens but quite likes a crisp lettuce leaf in their club sandwich? That crisp firmness can be attributed to the freshness of the vegetable. Lettuce is known to be the champion of long shelf life items in the fridge. If left unwashed in a ziploc bag, the ingredient can stay fresh for more than a week. It’s because of this characteristic that a British tabloid called Daily Star recently compared UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’ survival in tenure with lettuce. In the classic style of British humour, they even live-streamed a picture of Truss alongside a ball of lettuce with stick-on eyes to test who outlives whom.

As Netizens laugh along and add to the joke, we take the opportunity to highlight the benefits of adding lettuce to regular dishes in a tropical country like India. Home chef and food writer Anushruti says that the leafy vegetable is high in minerals like calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and potassium, and it would be healthy to include it in mainstream cooking. “Using lettuce in a salad is a no-brainer, but I also love to use it in roasted and grilled vegetables. I do this by adding roughly chopped lettuce when the vegetables are half done. This ensures that the leaf does not get charred and is roasted to perfection,” she adds.