The past few months I have become a big fan of salads. Coming from the girl who used to gag on lettuce, this is a big deal to me. I’m thrilled that I can finally stand the watery taste of lettuce, and proudly tell people in a haughty voice, “Yes, I had a salad for lunch today.” Okay, maybe I don’t take it that far, because I know that the salads I eat are anything but healthy. See, I like cheese. And croutons. And dressing. My salads look like this: a few pieces of lettuce scattered about, a cup of cheese, two cups of croutons (got to have at least two in every bite!) and then four cups of dressing – preferably ranch. So. That is not a good salad. I have realized this. I know I need to do better. I’ve tried incorporating chicken and steak into my salads. That’s pretty good. I’ve tried cutting back on the croutons. That makes me sad. I’ve even looked into getting rid of the ranch dressing and switching to caesar. That’s where I got confused. Which dressing is better for me?
I did some research online to try to understand which container I should grab for. The following facts were received from nutritiondata.self.com, a nifty site that breaks down the nutritional labels. For ranch, I was looking at reduced fat ranch dressing, and for caesar I was looking at the low calorie dressing. Both are based off a serving size of one tablespoon. Here were my findings:
Ranch Caesar
Calories- 29 Calories- 16
Total Fat- 2g Total Fat- 1g
Cholesterol- 2 mg Cholesterol- 0
Sodium- 136 mg Sodium-162mg
Total Carbohydrate- 3g Total Carbohydrate- 3g
Sugars- 1g Sugars- 2g
What did I learn? Well, ranch has more calories, but caesar has more sodium and sugar. I’m not sure how to draw a conclusive answer from comparing these dressings. I guess my decision will be to try to lessen all the bad stuff (that I love so much) on my salads. Which means less cheese, croutons, and dressing, and I’ll try to beef up on the lettuce and even hide some spinach in there.
Do you have a specific salad that you love? What are you go-to ingredients?
Nutritional information found at nutritiondata.self.com
