Sorry Salads: Part II
About a year ago, I wrote about salads and how they’ve slowly transformed from a healthy meal option into something on par with a trip to the drive-thru, where their calories content rivals a half-dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts, the number of fat grams in a dozen bacon strips, and the number of sodium grams than 60 filled-to-the-brim cups of buttery movie theater popcorn contain.
And in a year’s time, not much has changed – with a steady stream of sorry salads popping up everywhere, including across the pond.
According to Which Magazine, a British-based periodical dedicated to consumer reports and advocacy, the average prepared salad throughout the mother land’s restaurants and delicatessens pack nearly as many calories and more fat grams than a Big Mac at McDonalds.
Which Magazine looked at 20 of the most popular salads bought, assessing each salad’s calorie and fat content, and found that the average salad bought and sold weighed in at 24 grams of fat and carried 420 calories!
By comparison, the standard Big Mac – you know the jingle, “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, sesame seed bun – packs about 490 calories and waddles along with 20 grams of fat.
As the editor of Which Magazine said, it’s not that vegetables are high in fat, or that toppings on salads are necessarily bad, it’s that they tended to be used extremely generously.
In other words, the amounts used sapped the nutritional benefits that salads once epitomized.
Now, you don’t have to eat a salad plain (though that wouldn’t be a terrible idea) to have it be healthy. The trick is to pack your salad with as much natural ingredients as possible in order to make it as flavorful as possible.
That’s why so many salads are overloaded on calories and fat, because there’s this perception that salads are void of taste.
Whether that’s true or not depends on the vegetables used. If it’s the traditional triumvirate of salad vegetables – lettuce, tomato and cucumber – then there’s some truth to that perception. But a salad should have LOTS of vegetables, using each in roughly equal amounts.
The best way to get the most nutrition out of your salad is to make them yourself. Sure, it’s easier to get one on the run or already prepared, but I can guarantee you that making your own will be a much tastier and fresher experience than purchasing one (salads in restaurants are almost always pre-prepared, many using lettuce from the bag – yuck!).
Really kick up the flavor profile by aiming for eight to nine different vegetables when preparing them. For instance, besides the triumvirate, include red bell peppers, Vidalia onions, spinach, radishes, radicchio and some baby carrots (I prefer them chopped julienne style).
And even though salads shouldn’t be high in fat, they don’t have to be void of fat. In fact, they shouldn’t be void of fat.
It depends on the fats you’re using. “Sorry salad” fats tend to be those found in saturated form, like those found in bacon bits, hamburger chunks, or shredded cheese. Use healthy fats by chopping up some olives or with a handful of garbanzo beans.
Another healthy fat to use are avocados. Avocados are one of the few vegetables that has a natural fat content, and it’s the healthy omega-3 kind.
But bear in mind that when you use avocados, put a sliver or two on when you dish our a bowl for yourself, don’t include it in a prepared salad that you’re storing away for later (it will brown and spoil quickly if you do it that way).
Finally, use dressings sparingly. Naturally, the best are the organic varieties, and they ought to be thin in their consistency (vinaigrettes are ideal).
Don’t shy away from salads. They’re still among the healthiest meals you can eat – so long as you know what you’re putting on it and in what amounts.
Sources
nutraingredients.com
eatthis.menshealth.com
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