Sorry Salads

Whenever I go out to eat, I always like to take a look at a restaurant’s choice of salads. After all, when you hear the word “salad” it’s generally considered to be a healthy food choice. Often times it is, filled with nutritious vegetables like peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes; low calorie staples like lettuce and cabbage; and vitamin-packed carrots (vitamin A), spinach (vitamin K) and olives (vitamin E). But I have to say that more and more restaurants are covering up salad’s nutritional value with high calorie dressings, empty calorie croutons and high fat cheeses that virtually rob salad dishes of their perceived health benefits.

Taco Salads

This is perhaps the worst of the worst when it comes to high-calorie salads. Your typical taco salad is loaded with high-calorie hamburg, more than a dollop of sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese, inside a saturated-fat loaded tortilla bowl. Avoid these.

Antipasto Salads

Your typical antipasto salad ought to be titled “Anti-health promoting salad.” That’s because these salads aren’t really salads at all. Often, they have more “meat” in them than vegetables. I put quotes around meat because deli salami, ham, turkey and roast beef are highly processed, nutrition-sapping frauds that masquerade as quality proteins. What’s more, they’re a great way to raise your blood pressure due to their high sodium content. If you want to add protein to your salad – which I highly suggest – opt for all-natural luncheon meats or, even better, grilled chicken breast that you’ve grilled yourself.

Greek Salads

A spoonful of feta cheese is fine, but most restaurants’ Greek salads are so feta cheese-infused that all you can taste is the feta. If you really want to have feta cheese in your salad, I’ve got no problem with that. Just make sure that it’s not covering it. If you really want to be a smart eater, choose organic varieties of feta cheese as they have a better balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and have higher vitamin content than the typical feta cheese you see in stores. This is because organic feta cheeses come from cows that are grass-fed, as opposed to grain-fed.

My point here is not to suggest that salads are dieting nightmares. It’s more to suggest that salads, in and of themselves, aren’t healthy choices. If you really want a healthy salad choice, make them yourself and be the one who decides what goes on top of them to kick up their flavor.

The more colorful your salad, the better. Not only because more color adds to its aesthetics, but because you get a greater amount of flavor from your salad when they’re colorful, allowing you to limit the amount of dressing you put on top. Oh, and there’s more antioxidant content in foods rich in color (e.g. A salad containing lettuce, tomato, onion, avocado, carrots, radicchio, mushrooms, bell pepper and cucumber is a great example). My favorite dressings are organic ones and are of the vinaigrette variety. Vinaigrettes are lower in calories and because they’re so thin in texture, they spread throughout the salad much more evenly than thick dressing varieties.

A salad is no longer “just a salad.” They’ve become fast food options on par with French fries and hamburgers. Keep that in mind the next time you’re looking to order a salad and be wary of what’s in it.