Iceberg lettuce has less nutritional value compared to any other form of lettuce I know of.Originally Posted by Happy Noodle Boy
As for the stuff above, I could run through it one at a time if you'd like.
Low in sodium, saturated fat and cholesterol: it's lettuce for one so no trout. Second, none of that actually matters all that much.
Thiamin: This is in pretty much everything you'll eat anyway, but 100g of iceberg lettuce only has 3% of your daily requirement. You'll find almost double the amount in romaine lettuce, quadruple in beef liver, and triple for a 100g steak as well. It's a source sure, but there's no shortage of better ones for the same mass of food.
Vitamin B6: Iceberg lettuce has 2% of your daily value in 100g. Using the same examples as above, Romaine has 4%, Liver has 51%, and Steak has 22%. If you're concerned about Vitamin B6, then Romaine is literally twice as good as Iceberg, but neither is a good source at all relatively speaking. Unless you like the idea of eating 5kg of Iceberg lettuce a day to get it (a bit of hyperbole there of course).
Iron: So Iceberg comes in at 2%, Romaine at 5%, and both lose quite handily to dead animals. In the case of Iceberg lettuce, it's losing by an order of magnitude or more.
Potassium: You know what, let's skip the percentages. Iceberg has next to nothing again, Romaine is double Iceberg, and the meats coming in at 5 times the amount of potassium. I'm sensing a trend in all of these.
Dietary Fiber is more of the same, though obviously the meat doesn't rank here since meat isn't known for it's fiber content. Vitamin A, Iceberg is at 10%, Romaine at 174%, and Liver at 634%. Vitamin C, Iceberg is at 5%, Romaine at 40%. Or you could just eat a damn orange and get 201%. For Vitamin K, Iceberg is at 30%, but again, eat the same amount of Romaine and you're done for the day. Folate, Iceberg clocks in at 7%, Romaine at 34%, Liver is at a whopping 63%. And finally, for Manganese, the slight edge goes to Romaine, and Liver beats them both and steals their lunch money.
Those are just a few examples, but I think I made my point. Iceberg isn't as good a source for any of those as even Romaine lettuce. And as soon as we bring other foods into the mix we see that for most of those nutrients calling Iceberg a good source is stretching the truth a bit to say the least.
EDIT: I didn't say it was devoid of all nutritional value, I said it basically was. Which most people would rightly take to mean it isn't devoid, but it's close enough that it's not worth bothering with it unless you really, really like eating it. Yes, there's some in there, but it's a terrible source for just about anything the body needs.
Also, don't just go to some random Yahoo Answers page trying to make a point. That person doesn't even say where they're getting their information, nor do they quantify much beyond simply saying "it's good." Pretty much nothing on that page is actually useful for judging Iceberg lettuces nutritional value. You can't just analyze it in a vacuum, you have to look at the actual values and compare to other sources to learn anything meaningful about it.
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