When people want to lose weight or be healthier, they often start eating
salad. That’s great, but even an innocent salad can be less healthy
than you’d think. Here’s how to optimize it.
1. Upgrade Your Lettuce
1. Upgrade Your Lettuce
I was recently at Trader Joe’s
and checked out a bag of washed spinach I was thinking of buying. It
said it was packed two weeks earlier in Mexico, and would not expire for
another week.
When your greens have moved
thousands of miles and have been picked two weeks ago, they are
expired. The nutrients have mostly all been lost by now.
Solution:
In you live somewhere sunny, or it’s summer, it will be easier for you
to get fresh greens. Grow your own, go to a farmer’s market, or join a
community shared agriculture project.
In
winter months, look for salad greens from as close as possible. In
winter, you also want to eat more root vegetables and cooked and stewed
foods, in accordance with the season.
2. Upgrade Your Dressing
Man,
salad dressing is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Even if it’s organic,
even if it’s got a sweet picture of Paul Newman on the bottle, it’s
probably not healthy at all.
Most
salad dressing is made with canola oil, a processed, inflammatory,
omega 6-laden, free-radical dense oil. Don’t be fooled when it’s say
it’s ‘expeller-pressed.’ It’s no better.
Some salad dressing have flavor enhancers in the MSG family, and some have hydrogenated oils, the bastard cousins of canola oil.
Solution:
It’s quite easy to dress your own salad in extra virgin olive oil or
flax oil, coupled with coconut vinegar, lemon, apple cider vinegar, or
balsamic vinegar. You can get fancy and make your own salad dressing
concoctions with dried herbs, or with coconut cream or avocado. I often
just squeeze a whole avocado out if it’s shell and onto my salad.
The
only salad dressing I’ve seen as yet that seems okay is by Bragg’s
brand. It has simple ingredients and is made with olive oil. If you
know of others, please share on the blog.
3. Upgrade Your Toppings
Rather than just some sad tomato slices, get some real nutrition going on that salad with delicious and filling toppings.
Solutions:
Superfoods:
Fermented vegetables and sprouts have super powers beyond their basic
raw seed and veggie forms. Get your friendly bacteria and
phytonutrients. Gomasio is a Japanese style blend of sesame seed, sea
salt and kelp powder that contains enough iodine to give your thyroid
its daily dose.
Proteins:
Slice an pastured hard-boiled egg or some leftover pastured beef on that
salad for high protein plus beneficial fats and fat soluble vitamins.
Super
veggies: How ‘bout tossing some roasted beets on that salad for a nice
texture, a rich taste and serious blood building and liver cleansing.
Nuts: Your soaked and dried nuts can add some nice crutch plus trace minerals and B vitamins.
For More Info: http://www.bridgitdanner.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment