Healthy greens, colorful vegetables with a little dressing is healthy, right? Yes but salads can be a nutritional nightmare concerning how much dressing is added. Salads, especially the dressing, are the calorie traps in restaurants. The normal recommendation for salad dressing is 2 tablespoons, while restaurants put on 2 ladles. 1 serving ladle is equivalent to 4 tablespoons!!! That’s 8 tablespoons of dressing on your salad. Now, 2 tablespoons is about the size of a ping-pong ball or even a shot glass. Imagine 4 ping-pong balls of dressing on your salad. That is a lot of dressing for your healthy greens. Here are some salad dressing options with their recommended portions.
Ranch Regular -148 calories, 15.6 g fat
Ranch Lite (low-fat) – 80 calories, 6 g fat
Ranch Fat-Free – 48 calories, 0.3 g fat
Creamy Italian – 110 calories, 12 g fat
Lite Italian – 50 calories, 5 g fat
Fat-free Italian – 20 calories, 0.3 g fat
Balsamic Vinaigrette – 90 calories, 8 g fat
Lite Balsamic Vinaigrette – 45 calories, 3.5 g fat
If the servings of dressing in restaurants were the recommended portion size, salads would be perfectly healthy. At a restaurant, your 8 tablespoons of salad dressing add quite a bit of fat and calories. The average person is recommended to keep their fat intake to 60- 80 grams a day. With that much dressing on your salad, you are getting most of your daily fat intake in one meal! You should have just ordered the hamburger!!
You can still eat salads and keep the dressing relatively light. You can ask for the dressing on the side; this way you can add the dressing yourself. You can even ask your server if the restaurant has any “lite” options to choose from. By choosing one of these options, you will actually be able to taste the greens and vegetables, not just the dressing. Salads can still be healthy if you know how to save yourself from its hidden calories.
