Sitting around the dinner table on Sundays for family dinners, my family would always says “Here Katie, eat some salad, it’s good for you.” But loaded with croutons, hot-bacon dressing, hard-boiled eggs, and more, I can’t help but think that doesn’t look healthy. This standard interaction with my family led me to question, is salad actually healthy? The answer: it depends.
According to WebMd.com, there are four very healthy reasons to eat salad:
- For the fiber. A high fiber diet can help prevent constipation and lowers cholesterol levels.
- For the health benefits of fruit and vegetables. Dark green and orange vegetables are extremely healthy and usually main ingredients in a salad which can help increase your antioxidant levels. There are also many diseases that can be prevented from eating fruits and vegetables.
- To cut calories and increase satisfaction. Eating a low calorie salad before a meal can help with feeling full sooner and reduce the overall number of calories eaten during a sitting.
- To get “smart fats.” If you eat monounsaturated fat (such as the fat in olive oil), the body will absorb protective phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are also beneficial for prevention and treatment of many diseases.
Despite these beneficial reasons to eat salad, there are also many times salads can kill a diet. A very popular diet killer is a chicken caesar salad. The dressing itself is heavy and then is loaded with croutons, chicken, and cheese. This one salad can hold around 750 calories and high amounts of sodium. Chain restaurants like Applebee’s and Chili’s advertise salads as the “healthy alternative,” but some of their salads, such as the Buffalo Chicken Salad and Santa Fe Salad can range anywhere from 690-1020 calories.
In my opinion, salads are the healthy alternative, but knowing how to tell the unhealthy from the healthy is important. You want protein on a salad but make sure it is lean. Avoid bacon and fried or crispy chicken and pick the grilled chicken, hard-boiled eggs, or tuna. Adding tons of vegetables to your salad is a good choice and when picking cheese choose a smaller amount of a strong-flavored cheese. Instead of picking pre-packaged croutons, opt for homemade croutons, which are lower in fat, or nuts. Most importantly, is picking the right dressing. Look for dressings marked low-fat, or choose the classic oil and vinegar.
If your salad looks like this, you’ve made the right choice.
If your salad looks like this, chances are you are about to eat a bunch of calories.
So, is my grandma’s crouton loaded salad topped with hot-bacon dressing healthy? The answer: no. It can be a guilty pleasure occasionally, but should not be a staple part of a diet. Telling healthy salads apart from unhealthy is easy if you follow the basics: keep it light and colorful using veggies and light dressings.
I love this article because all of my friends do this: we’ll go to salad works and they’ll load up on macaroni and dressing to the point where it’s unrecognizable as a salad. I have never liked dressing in my entire life, which i didn’t realize until recently is a blessing in disguise. Salads are marketed these days by how they sound with chipotle sauce and crispy whatever, but the real appeal in a salad should be all the colors of the fruits and vegetables in it. Clearly if your salad is drenched in dressing, all of which are mainly sugar, and has lots of starchy carbs your salad is no longer a salad but a different course entirely. Great information! It’s always good to see people being informed about what they’re really putting into their bodies!
This is so depressing. I have been hearing so often that salad is actually worse than simply eating a slice of pizza. I love salad, and have been doing everything I can to make sure i eat one instead of a “worse” option at the dining halls and out to dinner. No wonder why I havent lost a single pound yet! I wonder what other foods are secretly bad for you.
Every time I try to eat healthy, my go to meal is a salad. I always feel so good and like I made the right healthy choice after eating one, but never really considered if it was really healthy. Starring at a plate full of greens to me always looks healthy. It is said, the darker the leaf to healthier it is. Perhaps I should start avoiding the ice berg lettuce option and instead try to include some spinach leaves. In this article, it shows what to include in a salad and what to avoid to make it healthy. Try a little bit of a light dressing, a dry cheese, grilled chicken and lots of veggies! I remember discussing this topic with a friend from home who is involved in the food industry and he said that a salad can be one of the most fattening things on the menu, I was shocked!
I really liked this post! A lot of people often get the misconception that if you’re eating salad it’s automatically healthy, but what a lot of people tend to neglect is that if you pack it up with unhealthy things you may as well not even be eating a salad. I like that you suggest how a salad can be healthy and the different components that you should put on a salad if you want it to have the nutritional value that it’s intended to have, I also enjoyed how you had an alternative salad that isn’t as healthy. Showing that food chains offer salads that they claim are the “healthier option” really aren’t as healthy as we’re made to think. Salads lose a lot if not all of their nutrients when ranch, chicken and cheese are added.
Funny thing about salads; they can be very decieving. I worked at Applebees for a period of time and on every break I would have that delicious oriental salad. It was my favorite thing on the menu, and hey, it was salad so it was ok to eat it every single day right? Well no. I found out later, after i had gained five unwanted pounds with no explination that the dressing contained chicken fat and all types of horrible extracts. It turns out it held the most calories of all items on the menu. I was appauled. Nutrition can be tricky. Eating healthy is not as simple and easy at is seems. Some foods that you eat on the day to day thinking you are making a good choice may turn out to be some of the most harmful foods for your health. One of which I was a big fan of; pop tarts. Yes, they are horrible; stay away from them! Here are some other surprising foods that are detrimental to a healthy life style;
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20307363_6,00.html
I’m so glad someone posted about this issue so many people today could put a baked potato on a salad and still call it a healthy option. Not to mention most of the dressings offered at many salad bars and super markets are high in fat and calories. As an alternative to those dressings would be olive oil or vinegar which are much healthier and lower calories. This article describes how you can “ruin” a healthy salad with certain foods such as certain meats, cheese, and things like tortilla chips.
This post is one that I think is important for all of those looking to lose a few pounds. I use to think the same as you that as long as its a salad then it has to be good for you since it has lots of veggies in it. However, as I grew up I started to notice the calorie count as you mentioned as well as learned more about it in health class. Something I learned new from your post was that croutons are bad for you (bummer because that’s my favorite part). I agree with your post but I’d like to add that I think the most fatty part of the salad would be the dressing. With that being said McDonald’s salad with dressing and croutons has double the calories as their single burger. A few ways to cut down on calories from your salad would be to use darker greens, using vinegar based dressings, and stay away from fried and processed meats.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/10/21/10-ways-your-brain-is-smacking-you-around-and-what-to-do-about-them/
Check out more tips on cutting down on calories in your salad at this website http://nutrition.about.com/od/recipesmenus/tp/badsalad.htm
I actually realized this a few years ago when Cheesecake Factory came out with their Skinnylicious menu. I was scrolling through the Skinnylicious menu and was so impressed with the great meals for such low calories. Obviously, a girl trying to fit into a prom dress is going to scan the salad section as well. I did so, and was so surprised to see how high in calories the salads were. Why would I deprive myself of a juicy chicken tacos with a side of seasoned veggies to eat a plain ol’ salad? Never! It’s also funny you mention how many calories the toppings add to these salads. I recently found an article that claimed bacon can actually help you to lose weight! According to Bacontoday.com, “bacon helps to fully satiate our appetite with high protein / low carb energy, helping the body lose weight, raise one’s metabolism and build leaner, stronger muscles.” You should check out the article for more information! http://bacontoday.com/top-10-reasons-bacon-is-actually-healthy-for-you/