Healthy Foods
Worst Salad Toppings
by: Leanne Ely, CNC
A common misconception in the world of food is– because it’s a salad, it must be healthy. Oh no, do not be fooled by that! Salads can have just as much fat and sometimes even more than a greasy cheeseburger. So I’m going to compile a little list of the worst salad toppings to help you keep your salad healthy and refreshing, the way it’s meant to be!
Meat: Adding meat for protein to your salad isn’t necessarily bad, but it depends on how that meat is cooked. You’re going to want grilled meat, not deep-fried or breaded! That adds a whole new level of unnecessary fat and grease that’ll weigh you down and make you feel more tired than energized.
Croutons: Again, these are often deep fried bread cubes, yuck. Not good! Stay far, far away and instead, make your own croutons! Take some whole grain bread and toast it plain, cut it up, and ta-da, croutons! Or if you’re just looking for a little crunch and want to avoid adding any grain or gluten all together, you can throw in some chopped apple, or a handful of the nuts of your choice.
And of course, the biggest salad offender –
Dressing: So many dressings are just swimming in excess calories, fat and chemicals. The dressings that are likely to be the healthiest are vinaigrettes. Another trick about dressings – when eating out also glance at the nutritional facts. We have a tendency of dousing our salads in the entire packet of dressing, but if you look on the back you’ll notice that most packs are TWO serving sizes, EEK!. So if you drown your salad in the entire thing, you’ll double the fat and calories. Be warned!
The summer is the best season to really experience great salads because of all the veggies and fruits that come into season! Plus with all this warm weather you’ll really want to eat something cooler and avoid slaving over a hot stove, right? So go salad crazy! Mix and match veggies, fruits, nuts, and find favorite combos because you can’t really go wrong! If you avoid the little nutritional slip ups I listed above, you’ll be golden!
Check out our newest Summer Salads menu!