Chefs Prefer Mills  
American Culinary Institute picks Salinas line as best in class Susan D. Brown from The Californian, October 5th, 2004

A panel of chefs has chosen lettuce grown by Salinas company Mills Family Farms as the best in its class, the company announced Monday.

The American Culinary Institute named Mills Family Farms' Wholeaves® as the best packaged leaf lettuce marketed to the food-service industry, which includes restaurants, delis, hospitals and school cafeterias.

Wholeaves® was chosen by a panel of chefs trained to discern subtle differences in the taste, smell and appearance of food.

Dave Mills, senior vice president of Mills Family Farms, said the secret to the freshness of the company's lettuce is that the leaves are never cut.

"There's not a knife in the place," Mills said Monday.

During the competition, held in San Francisco, various brands of lettuce were lined up on plates and labeled only with a bar code.

Each chef sat in front of a computer. When the lettuce was served, each judge scanned the bar code on his or her plate.

Prompts on the screen listed the qualities of superior lettuce, and the judges compared their lettuce to the qualities on the list.

The American Culinary Institute requires that its tasting judges ignore their individual preferences and focus on specific standards.

"Imagine if you were asked to judge blueberry muffins at the county fair, but you hated blueberries," said Heidi Wismiller, chief operating officer at the institute. "You might not like a certain muffin, and if asked why, you'd say it tastes too much like blueberries."

The institute defines what makes a muffin, or a leaf of lettuce, good by asking the people who buy the products what they want.

The chefs judge primarily on taste, but appearance and freshness also influence the scores.

"Qualities like freshness show up in taste," Wismiller said. "Wilted lettuce doesn't taste good."

At Mills, instead of cutting lettuce, workers pluck each leaf from the stem by hand, leaving the water and nutrients sealed in. Workers carefully select and pack the best leaves, producing packaged lettuce that's as fresh as a whole head but more convenient, the company said.