Salads are often considered one of the healthiest foods. Many salads do include nutritious ingredients and can be part of a balanced diet. Other salads include ingredients that are high in fat and contain too many calories and too much salt, but not enough nutrition. According to Christine Avanti and Sharyn Kolberg, authors of "Skinny Chicks Don't Eat Salads: Stop Starving, Start Eating and Losing," some salads can have as many as 1,000 calories on one plate. Knowing which salads are fattening can help steer you towards healthier options.
Caesar Salad
A Caesar salad begins with a large portion of leafy greens, which are a healthy addition to your meal. Leafy greens provide you with several different vitamins and minerals that help promote good health. The toppings and dressing on the salad can bring the total calories to around 1,500, note Avanti and Kolberg, and the fat to over 100g. A 2 tbsp. serving of Caesar dressing has about 12g of fat and 130 calories. Many times, two or three times that much is added to the salad. The croutons that adorn the top of a Caesar salad are often fried, which adds more calories and fat. Parmesan cheese is high in saturated fat and many versions of this salad include more than just a sprinkle.
Crispy Chicken Salad
Salad and chicken are each nutritious foods, but often the chicken is battered and fried to make it crispy. Charles Kandutsch, author of "Eat The Right Foods Companion Cookbook," reports that three fried chicken strips add more than 400 calories and about 18g of fat to your salad. Often, the salad has more than three strips of chicken, which can easily double or triple these numbers. The salad dressing adds at least an additional 100 calories and about 15g of fat. Another common ingredient in a crispy chicken salad is cheese, which if often full-fat cheese that is high in saturated fat and sodium. Hard-boiled eggs, bacon and croutons are other common additions that contain too much fat and too many calories.
Cobb Salad
A Cobb salad includes a variety of leafy greens, but also includes several toppings that add fat and calories. A traditional Cobb salad includes bacon, hard-boiled eggs, chicken, avocado and cheese. Bacon is mostly fat and increases the grams of fat in your salad. Hard-boiled eggs, chicken and avocado are all nutritious ingredients, but huge portions in one salad can cause a Cobb salad to reach 1,000 calories and 80g of fat, or more, report Avanti and Kolberg. The salad dressing that is poured on top is often more than 2 tbsp., the size of one serving, which increases these numbers even more.
References
- "Skinny Chicks Don't Eat Salads: Stop Starving, Start Eating and Losing"; Christine Avanti and Sharyn Kolberg; 2009
- "Eat The Right Foods Companion Cookbook"; Chalres Kandutsch; 2004
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