How many times have you ordered some salad dressing on the side hoping to avoid having your salad being drenched with dressing, but after you taste the dressing your salad ends up looking like one of these ones anyway?

Wassup Gente,

This is a post 2 weeks in the making not because of any in-depth research but rather because of the traffic jam of ideas in my head! So i’ll just give it a shot and try to keep it simple!

It all started when I went to a restaurant and I over heard this lady asking for salad dressing on the side because she’s watching her weight and half way through her salad she asked for a second serving of dressing because it was “delicious”. I know i know, I should be minding my own business but one can only do so much while waiting for food!

This got me thinking of how many times I have done the same thing, trying to watch what I eat and end up eating even more without even noticing. Listening to this lady made me realize how EASY is to defeat the whole purpose of having a salad even when we are monitoring how much dressing we eat. For some reason having the dressing on the side brings you into a comfort zone thinking that we are in control but in reality it can bring you into a fools zone if the dressing can seduce your palate.

I did some reading online (too many to sites to list them all) and found some interesting stuff that helped me to get these conclusions:

1 Serving equals 1 cup, 8oz, or 16 tablespoons.

Most side salad dressing containers are between 2oz to 4oz. In other words, every time you order dressing on the side you are consuming from 1/4 to 1/2 of the total calories-per-serving you see in the bottles of dressing in your fridge. Example, SoupPlantation’s Blue Cheese dressing contains 140 calories-per-2 tablespoons. If you have just one 2oz. container of this dressing you are consuming 280 Calories, if you have one 4oz. container you’re consuming 480 calories. That’s ONE QUARTER of the recommended daily calories intake just on your salad dressing!!!

According to Calorie-count.com 2-4oz of fat-free dressings contain 100-250 calories, regular dressings (ranch, 1000 Island, Italian) contain 200-400 calories, and creamy dressings (caesar, blue cheese, etc) can contain between 450 to 700 calories per container.

Here’s a little chart I created for all those who enjoy numbers and the calorie counting game. Check the calories in any of the bottles of salad dressing in your fridge and use this chart to calculate how many calories you consume with your salad.

Example, I got Naturally Fresh’s Classic Caesar and it’s 170 calories per serving and the serving size it’s 2 tablespoons. If I were to just consume a small 2oz cup of this dressing I would be eating a total of 340 calories. 2 tablespoons equal 1oz, if 1oz equal 170 calories then 2oz equal 340 calories!!

What happens if the little 2oz cup is just not enough, and you order another one, now we’re talking about almost 700 calories… Does it matter if it’s on the side?

So next time you go grab yourself a salad before you start feeling good about yourself for eating healthy and “monitoring” the dressing by having it on the side think about the evil twin and don’t let it fool you!!!

Stay tune for my next post where I will give you some tips so you can avoid the evil twin and still enjoy your salads when you’re out or at home.

Suerte Gente,

Izra