Joann Bally CSCS
I often asked my personal training clients what they had to eat that day. Often, especially if they were trying to lose weight, they would say: I was good
today. I only had a salad for lunch. Leaving aside the fallacy that whatever you had to eat could make you “good” or “bad,” just calling something a salad is
not very descriptive. A salad can be a couple of hundred calories, or it can be over a thousand.
Let’s say we’re at a salad bar. You take a lot of lettuce, a little tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, and celery, then put some no-calorie dressing on it. This
is a “green” salad. No matter how big it is, it’s not enough calories to constitute a meal. You will get very hungry very soon.
The only way to get a salad like this, or any other one that is mostly green vegetables, to have enough calories is to drench it in high fat dressing, and we
don’t want to do that. This is because vegetables, with few exceptions, are very low in calories.
Take this salad, add some garbanzo beans, olives, avocado, plus a little hard-boiled egg and maybe some cheese and/or croutons, and we are close to having a
meal. (Don’t overdo these higher calorie items, either.) Add a cup of soup (as long as it’s not creamed) and a piece of bread (yes, bread) and enjoy your
lunch.
The reason salad bars have such a bad reputation in the dieting community is that it’s so easy to swoop down on the pre-made salads—potato with mayonnaise,
macaroni, pasta, crab, etc. Then we have things like ham salad to cope with (a friend of mine has a recipe for Spam salad). Chef’s salad is another one to
worry about. There may also be desserts. Fortunately, dessert can usually be fruit.
Fruit salads, especially with cottage cheese or yogurt, or accompanied by crackers, can carry enough calories to be a nice occasional warm-weather meal. You
can mix some fruit in your vegetable salad, too.
Don’t stay away from salads, but don’t live on them either. A salad can be a good side dish and a great way to get some of your vegetable servings. Green is
great, but salads with vegetables of other colors too are better yet. Stay away from most prepared salads. If you like having salad for lunch, make sure it
has enough substance that you won’t be diving into the candy machine in the afternoon because you’re hungry.
Related using the H&F.com Search:
Junk Food still on Schools Menu
HEALTHandFITNESS.com 
