Your Salad is Making you Fat

Ok, so if you spend all week behaving and eating a salad for lunch week after week without any noticeable weight loss it might be because your salad is not as healthy as you think. Yeah it is shocking to find out that sometimes it is less fat and calories to have a hamburger than a salad. The cause hands down is the salad dressing that accompanies the lettuce. I recently read a statistic that Americans alone consume 9 billion pounds of lettuce, 5,4 billion pounds of tomatoes, 2 billion pounds of carrots and 252 million pounds of cucumbers. Now, eating all these veggies is not the problem. The problem starts when you load up the salad dressing. Most of the dressings offered to you at fast food restaurants are high calorie mayo based dressings which are high in fat and calories. Imagine 2 tablespoons of some of your favorite salad dressings (like Blue Cheese) have up to 17 grams of fat, and I know I am guilty of using more than 2 tablespoons on a large dinner salad.

Companies like Bolthouse Farms in California are replacing creamy yogurt as the main base in their dressings which cuts calories without drastically impacting the taste. Bolthouse Farms’ team of salad scientists created two lines of dressings that complement the natural flavors of salad rather than masking them. The company replaced the dressing base with yogurt which yields an all-natural, low-calorie, low fat and full-flavor dressing.

Flavors include: Chunky Blue Cheese, Caesar Parmigiano, Classic Ranch, Thousand Island, Honey Mustard, Original Coleslaw and Creamy Italian. All flavors have at least 50% less fat and50% fewer calories than the next-closest competitor.  They also launched some olive oil based dressings with Omega 3’s.   These flavors have up to 95% less fat and 50% fewer calories than the next-closest competitor. The dressings are available nationwide with prices starting at $3.99 per bottle.

Good salad dressing choices are Newman’s Own Lighten Up Balsamic Vinaigrette or Light Honey mustard, Wishbone Red Wine, Ken’s Steakhouse Lite, Hidden Valley Ranch Light or various Kraft Done Right dressings. We’ll also be sharing several posts on homemade salad dressings from Weight Watchers and other popular programs.  It’s always fun to whip up your own dressing and you will love the taste! Easy Vinaigrette Recipes