I would be interested in hearing such an argument

I grew up with lettuce purchased from a local farmer's market, so when I first tried iceberg I was all, "What? This isn't lettuce! It has no taste!" Restaurants love it, though: any time I get a side salad at a restaurant it's 75% likely to be iceberg lettuce, unless the salad is a kind that specifically calls for something else (e.g. caesar salad requires romaine lettuce). But give me butter lettuce (which is what I grew up eating), romaine, or even red oak (my least favorite variety but at least it has flavor) over iceberg.

Iceberg does have some things going for it: it's got crunch, and I suspect it keeps rather well without wilting. (It's never around my house so I can't speak from personal experience). Those qualities, I'm sure, endear it to restaurants as a lettuce they can keep around for that one customer in ten who orders a side salad, and it's probably also why all the "salad mix" packages I've had the misfortune to consume (usually at someone else's house) seem to be iceberg-based (with a mix of other types too, but I can always tell the non-taste of iceberg lettuce). But there's just so much flavor in other lettuce varieties that I would say "Iceberg lettuce isn't really lettuce, so if you've only had iceberg then you don't yet know what real lettuce can taste like. Try butter lettuce, or even romaine hearts, and then you'll know what lettuce is. If, after that point, you still prefer iceberg, then go ahead, I won't argue with your taste. But don't think that you hate lettuce if all you've ever had is iceberg; it's like thinking you hate apples because all you've ever had is Red Delicious."

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zokier 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But red delicious is still definitely apple. I can definitely understand why someone would not prefer red delicious apples or iceberg lettuce, but that is quite different from claiming that iceberg lettuce isn't really a lettuce.

	▲	rmunn an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Which is why I put (facetiously) in my original comment. I'm perfectly aware that iceberg is really lettuce, and what I'm doing is making a "no true Scotsman" argument. It's all for fun. If I was being serious, I would define a new category, let's call it "tasty lettuce", which is a subset of lettuce and which iceberg should not be included in IMHO. But it's more fun to say something obviously incorrect but which conveys my meaning in ordinary conversation.

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Y_Y 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Better answer than expected. Biologically it cannot be denied it's a lettuce, but compared to butterhead it's utterly flavourless. Instead of calling plain unmodified things "vanilla" (a super tasty plant) we should be calling them "iceberg".

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koolba 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The two word description for iceberg lettuce is “crunchy water”. Works great when you want the crunch and nothing else. So perfect for sandwiches or a classic wedge salad where you are tasting the bacon and blue cheese.

People who think it can be used for a “real” salad are usually same ones that think that tomatoes are supposed to be tasteless too.

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tom_ 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

1. Place iceberg lettuce in mouth

2. Use mouth to attempt to detect lettuce taste