How Salad Become Unhealthy

Salad

Whenever say the word healthy, we right away think of fruits and green leafy vegetables. This is because this food group are true enough healthy and for most part, we often think of vegetable salad when it comes to eating right. But over the years, the many food products sold at supermarkets make staying healthy quite a challenge because we often do not know if the labels are telling the truth. And for this reason, even the healthy vegetable salad combination fall under the category unhealthy because even these innocent looking dishes can be high in carbs and calories.

A salad can become unhealthy if the ingredients added in will only contribute to high amounts of saturated fat, carbohydrates, sodium and calories. All these will be determined by what you add in to your salad.

What are Salads?

A salad is any of a vast variety of dishes and the most popular are the fruit and vegetable salad. Salad can be made of just about anything you want. Most salad contain legumes, pastas, grains or eggs. There are also what we call mixed salad where meat, sea food or poultry products are combined. Salad can be either hot or cold but most often they are referred to as mixtures of raw vegetables or fruits.

Vegetable salad often referred to as green salads mainly include leaf lettuce and leafy vegetables and to make it delightful to it, a sauce or dressing is added to it plus garnishes which can either be eggs, crotons, cheese, pasta, meat, nuts and sometimes whole grains or just about anything you wish to toss in. There are other salads that have pasta, gelatin or noodles for base. Although salads can be served hot or cold, most are served cold.

Salad recipe 

Why People are Into Salads:

The reason why lots of people love eating salads is because they are not only healthy but is also very flexible because salads can serve as:

• Appetizers: Salads or specifically light salads, are good boosters of appetizers especially if the salad is only light and does not have strong flavors in it.

• Side dish: Salads may also be used a side dish to meals especially if the main course is heavy on meat, salads can balance it all off.

• Main Course: For most people who are vegetarians or vegans, they turn to eating salads for their main course while some people who are closely watching their weight turn to this dish to get the protein they need from lean meat (such as chicken or turkey) which can keep them full until the next meal.

• Palate cleansing: Salads served during this point of the meal help settle the stomach after the main course.

• Dessert: Salads that fall for desserts are usually the sweet ones which mainly have fruits for their base and may be added with gelatin or other sweet creams such as whipped cream or condensed milk.

Healthy salad 

How Salads turn out to be Unhealthy:

As the years passed by and as food evolved, various types of garnishes and add-ons have been made to make salad more interesting to eat and as a result, it has also changed the nutritional content of the salad. This is perhaps the reason why salad can become unhealthy too—because of using the wrong kind of ingredients.

• Overdressing your salad:

There are salad dressings that get way over board because they tend to be very high in fat and calories. Placing dressings on our salads is fine but placing too much is a different side of the story. Placing salad dressings should only be around a tablespoon or two more than that could only make it unhealthy because of the calories and trans fat that it has. Instead of buying salad dressings that we find in supermarkets, why not use lime juice or salsa or look for a healthy vinaigrette recipe that you can use.

• Placing too much cheese:

Cheese is one healthy food because it is rich in protein and calcium. But because of the caloric content that cheese has, you may want to pay attention to how much you add in to your meal.

• Caloric garnishing’s:

It’s okay if you want to make your salad more appealing by adding in garnish, after all, we should enjoy the meals that we eat but when it comes to garnishes such as bacon and croutons, you need to know that they do not add any nutritional value to your dish but for sure the calories come piling in. Instead, why not use walnuts or flaxseed or even a few bits of fruits.

• Fried and processed meat:

Salads can also be filling to eat when pieces of lean chicken meat are added in and it will also serve as your main source of protein but when you add deep fried chicken strips to your salad, the nutritional value of your salad changes because like other unhealthy ingredients that you can add into your salad, it has unhealthy fats and calories in it.

• The healthy kind of greens:

This can come off surprising because choosing the right kind of vegetable for your salad is crucial. Most salads use ice berg lettuce, probably because of its nice crunchy texture but the truth is this kind of lettuce actually has no nutritional content at all. It would be best if you used darker green vegetables such as spinach, dandelion greens, watercress or basil leaves. They happen to have more flavors and contain loads of nutrients.

It does feel good to eat healthy especially when it’s a tasty salad you’re about to eat but you should also take time to find out if the salad you’re eating it really healthy. If you plan on coming up with your own salad, be careful when it comes to choosing the dressing especially those that claim to be fat-free or low fat. It would really be best if you used light dressings or better yet, whip up a vinaigrette of your own. You may add in garnishes but be sure that they are of lean meat and avoid processed or salty meats.

Salad recipes 

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