Poppy seed salad dressing poses two major concerns for consumers. First, it contains fats and sugars. Depending on your health concerns, you may need to closely monitor your consumption of these. Second, the poppy seeds used in food preparation and flavoring contain opiates, chemicals from which certain drugs are derived.
Saturated Fats
Like most salad dressings, poppy seed dressing will contain some form of oil. Which kind of oil and how much of it you would consume on your salad depends on the recipe and your personal preference.
A sample recipe from AllRecipes.com calls for a cup of vegetable oil and makes 14 servings. The single suggested serving of this poppy seed dressing contains 3.4 tsp. of vegetable oil, a little under 1 tbsp. plus 1/2 tsp. That's about 1 g of saturated fat and 140.5 calories.
The American Heart Association warns that consumption of saturated fats raises your blood cholesterol level. Raising those levels too high increases your risk of heart disease and stroke. The AHA recommends that no more than 7 percent of your daily caloric intake come from saturated fats. If you require 2,000 calories a day, consuming a single serving of poppy seed dressing will put you at your day's recommended limit of calories from saturated fats.
Refined Sugar
That same recipe calls for 1/3 cup of white granulated sugar, resulting in about 1 tsp. of sugar per serving. This represents 18 calories.
According to the University of Texas at Brownsville, as an average healthy individual, you should obtain no more than 10 percent of your daily caloric intake from refined sugars. If your daily intake is 2,000 calories, 10 percent is 200 calories. Your salad with poppy seed dressing represents less than 10 percent of your total recommended daily allowance of calories from refined sugars.
If you have diabetes, you may be further restricted in your sugar intake. Talk to your doctor to determine your daily guidelines. You may wish to follow a poppy seed dressing recipe that doesn't call for added sugar, or substitute artificial sweeteners in one that does.
Opium Intoxication
The poppy seeds used in food production come from the same plant from which opiate drugs such as codeine, morphine and heroin are derived: Papaver somniferum. When you consume poppy seed dressing, you are consuming a small amount of opiates. But even if, after following the AllRecipes.com recipe, you drank the entire 1.75 cups of dressing at once, you wouldn't get "high." The single tablespoon of poppy seeds therein isn't enough to cause intoxication.
Drug Tests
The 1/14 tbsp. of poppy seeds in your single serving of dressing may, however, be enough to show up on a drug test if you underwent urinalysis within the next two to five days. Barbara Mikkelson cites four cases where people lost jobs or job offers due to poppy seeds in their food affecting their drug screenings. Mikkelson reports that some agencies now require a higher level of opiates in order to eliminate poppy seed-related false positives. Nevertheless, your safest bet is to abstain from poppy seeds in your food for at least two days before a scheduled drug test -- or to abstain entirely if your employer subjects you to random drug screening.
References
- AllRecipes.com: Poppyseed Dressing Recipe
- USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference
- American Heart Association: Saturated Fats
- The University of Texas at Brownsville & Texas Southmost College: The Carbohydrates -- Sugars, Starches, and Fibers
- University of Wisconsin BioWeb; Papaver somniferum; Lindsay Wasicek; April 2009
- "Urban Legends Reference Pages"; Seeded Results; Barbara Mikkelson; December 2005
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