Nutritional Post: Skip that bottled dressing!

Throwing out my nutritional post for the week. This week I choose to blog about forgoing your favorite bottled dressing. That stuff is just garbage. Really. Toss it out!

Some ingredients you'll find in bottled salad dressings:
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Partially Hydrogenated oils (or Trans fats. Even if the bottle says 'zero' trans fat, by law it can say zero and get away with it as long it has less than 1 gram per serving)
- Monosodium glutamate or MSG
- Soybean, vegetable oils etc.

These ingredients are gross and will ruin a healthy food in no time! Do yourself a favor and throw out your dressing! It's not that hard to make little changes that can make a big impact on your health.

Why take something so wonderful (real vegetables) and load them up with junk and way too many calories? Do you know how many people I know say "I eat salad all the time, but I don't lose weight!" Well, maybe if you made your own dressing and used nutrient packed lettuce (more on this in a moment) you'd start seeing a difference. Just saying.

Regarding lettuce. Don't go using Iceberg lettuce. Seriously. It has almost no nutritional value. We use this big box of triple washed organic spring mix salad. The ingredient list: Tango, Lolla Rosa, Red and Green Romaine, Red and Green Oak, Red & Green Chard, Spinach, Mizuna, Radicchio, Frisee, Beet Greens, Arugula, Tat sol, Red Mustard. Now that is more like it! Loaded with vitamins and minerals. Here is just a sample of a few- 110% vitamin A, 50% vitamin C, 20% iron, 6% calcium, 2g fiber. Now lets compare iceberg: 9% vitamin A, 4% vitamin C, 1g fiber. Sure, when you're making a sandwich, it's fine to throw on some iceberg but when you're eating a salad- choose at least romaine lettuce which can more than double your vitamin consumption.

Understand why it's totally pointless to use bottled dressing on iceberg lettuce? I hope I helped shed some light for you.

Now onto my favorite recipe for salad dressing:

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1.5 tablespoons raspberry wine vinegar (balsamic and red wine are perfectly acceptable alternatives, too)
Sea salt & fresh ground pepper to your liking
A sprinkle of oregano & garlic powder
The juice of 1 lemon + the zest of the peel.

I take a big bowl and fill it with the spring mix, cucumbers, walnuts or pine nuts, red onion, cherry tomatoes or a fruit of choice (blueberry, apple, strawberry, etc). Then, I take each ingredient and add to salad and toss. We eat this EVERY single night with dinner.

Questions? Post them in the comment section.