Is Your Salad Sabotaging You?

Maybe it's not your salad that is sabotaging your careful weight management plan, but what you are putting on your salad as "dressing"!

If you are building a salad of lettuce and greens only, your plate or bowlful will only account for about 50 - 70 calories. Leafy greens are mostly water. Aside for the vitamins we get - especially from the dark leafy greens like spinach - a plateful of salad greens keeps us busy chewing and eating for quite awhile -- without a high calorie gain. That's one of our goals ( remember the blog on "Volumetrics"?) in eating to lose.

Once we have our base of greens, what we add to it begins to make a difference, but as long as we add lots of colorful vegetables - green peppers, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, onions, mushrooms- we are still adding vitamins, minerals and fiber, rather than a lot of calories.

When we get to the top of the salad, however, we can sometimes add enough calories to equal what we would have had if we had gone to McDonald's and ordered a Big Mac.

How can that be?

Well, a basic garden salad of about 2 cups of vegetables alone and one ounce of a "lite" dressing has about 145 calories.

If we start with the same basic salad and add fattening toppings often found on the salad bar, here's what happens:

Adding 1/2 cup cheddar cheese adds 100 more calories and 10 grams of fat
Adding 1/4 cup bacon bits adds 100 calories and 5 grams of fat
Adding 2 tablespoons sunflower seeds adds 100 calories and 9 grams of fat
Adding  a handful of croutons adds 100 calories and 4 grams of fat.

But the worst offender is what has practically become a separate food group unto itself, the salad dressing - and  specifically Ranch Dressing. Why? Because it is by far the most popular salad dressing on the market. America just loves it. In fact, it isn't even limit to dressing salads anymore. Many of us use it as a dip for chicken and french fries and maybe worst of all, we use it as a lure to get our kids to eat vegetables. Our grocery stores even package it right into the veggie trays they sell.

Now the first basic salad I described had 1 ounce - about 2 tablespoons - of "lite" ranch dressing on it - for an additional 70 calories.

But most people don't like "lite" Ranch, so they choose full-fat ranch which weighs in at 70 calories per tablespoon - making the serving size 140 calories...and 14 grams of fat.

And most people use 4 - 8 tablespoons of ranch dressing on their 50 calorie salad, which means the dressing alone adds from 280 to 560 calories.

Now you can see how the "fully-dressed" salad can be as deadly to your diet as a Big Mac and fries.

What to do?

Best bet is to find a fat-free, low-calorie salad dressing that you like and stick to the recommended 2 tablespoons. Opt for lots of veggies and very little or no added high-calorie toppings. But what if you absolutely, positively have to have the original, full-fat ranch dressing? Two tips: get the small serving in a cup on the side and dip your greens into it...you will see you need far less than you think.  A second option that I use myself is: put a very small amount ( about 1 tablespoon - on your basic salad and top (thin) with vinegar....you will be surprised how good your salad will taste and how much healthier you will be!