Is Salad Still a Healthy Food if You Add Dressing?

Is a healthy food still healthy if you do unhealthy things to make it taste better? That is a question that has driven millions of dieters to talk themselves into undoing some or all of the nutritional benefit gained by ordering salad when they eat out. Do you really have to completely give up salad dressing in order for those vegetables to maintain their status as a healthy food? Rather than providing a simple answer, how about looking at some of the facts and then arrive a decision?

• Oil and Vinegar Dressing

Oil and vinegar dressing of the regular variety–as opposed to low-fat or low-cal versions–might be considered less of a threat to the status of salad as a healthy food if you take into account its robust levels of vitamin E. Vitamin E does contain antioxidant properties that fight against cancer and other toxins in the body. On the other hand regular oil and vinegar dressing is perched atop the fatty heavyweights of salad dressing. And since every type of salad dressing derives most of its calories from fat, that makes oil and vinegar anything but a healthy addition to any food, even raw vegetables. The fat in oil and vinegar dressing is unsaturated, true, but the result is still going to be that the fat you eat when this dressing is overflowing your salad is going to turn to fat inside your body. Unless you could do with some excess fat, you aren’t doing yourself any nutritional favors. Oil and vinegar is a better option than Italian for those on a low sodium diet as it contains significantly lower amounts of salt.

• Blue Cheese Dressing

Approach blue cheese dressing with caution if you still want a salad to be qualify as a healthy food choice. Here is where you must deal with a salad topping that does carry the extra unhealthy weight of saturated fat. In fact, there is so much fat in blue cheese dressing that you would actually be better off covering your salad in just about anything else, including chocolate. The upshot is that if you are eating salad as a mainstay of a diet intended to cause serious weight loss and you then put blue cheese dressing on that salad then you may as well order the deep fried candy bar for dessert because it’s not going result in any more significant damage than you will already have caused with your salad. If losing weight isn’t an issue, then you may opt for this salad dressing as a source for not only for vitamin E, but vitamins A and C as well. Hey, you’ve got to find look for your healthy food choices wherever you can find them if you aren’t going to be serious about getting into shape.

• French Dressing

French dressing is another choice which means you will have to deal saturated fat. Like many other salad dressings, the only real advantage to pouring French dressing over a salad is the addition of a little more vitamin E to the diet. Those on a low-sodium diet who just can’t resist the occasional dressing on their salad will find that French has more sodium than oil and vinegar, but is a better choice than Italian or blue cheese.

• Thousand Island Dressing

Thousand Island dressing retains its position as one of the most popular of all salad dressings in spite of, or perhaps because, it offers not even the level of positive elements that the other dressing offer. Thousand Island dressing means both saturated and unsaturated fat, copious amounts of sodium and enough vinegar to potentially even become an issue among those with any kind of mold allergy.

Although foregoing dressing is the best route to maintaining salad’s status as a healthy food, any reduction is better than nothing. Regardless of which salad dressing you favor, keep in mind that even cutting back by a fourth or third will significantly cut down on empty caloric intake and the addition of fat to the diet.