X- Salads Exposed

"All green things must die"- Charlie Sheen

Salads- a staple of any dieting plan. Salads can be very healthy to eat if you make them yourself and aren't a Ranch dressing cultist. However, 99% of the time they are not. Here's a hint: if you throw a bunch of thick Ranch dressing and bacon bits on something, it is no longer a healthy menu item. Such is the case with restaurant "entree" salads. They come out on a 14" diameter plate and frequently top 1,000 calories such as Ruby Tuesday's Carolina Chicken Salad (1,300 calories).

Iceberg

If iceberg wasn't as crunchy as it is, this crop would be non-existent. The fact that we apply 1,000's of ways to get this flavor-less, nutrient-less product into as many items as possible is disturbing. It is green, shredded filler. I used the word "green" loosely, it is more like a see-through membrane then an actual color. Yet, it is far and away the #1 lettuce we consume in America. And here is the reason: a head of lettuce is about $1.10. If you shred it up, you can fill a shopping cart.




nom nom nom nom nom


My favorite thing to see at restaurants is the "iceberg wedge" salad. Oh, how exotic. Let's take a head of lettuce, and instead of actually shredding it, let's just hack it up into sixths with a butcher's knife. Then douse it with blue cheese dressing, bacon, tomatoes, etc.

Side Note: Iceberg's best friend is the almost equally nutrient-vapid celery!

Dressing

The only thing less healthy then iceberg is the dressing we drench our salads with. I don't know about you, but i don't make a turkey sandwich, pour 6 oz. of mayo on a plate and run it on every square inch of the bread like a psycho. Dressings are primarily made of : oil, water, and sugar.

Common Ingredients In Salad

Filler aka Iceberg
toasted and seasoned white bread
bacon
eggs
steak
chicken strips
smoked salmon
salami
tortilla chips
blue cheese
hard cheeses (cheddar, Parmesan, etc.)
black olives
walnuts, almonds, etc.
un-ripe, watery tomatoes
celery
2 slices of cucumber
.15 ounces of carrot
.20 ounces of red cabbage

Side Note: Radishes are omitted from the toppings list is because they do not taste good, and any appearance in a salad is probably a mistake. I hypothesize they are left on the kitchen counter from a different dish and get wrapped into everything in similar fashion to these games:

Designer Salads

You can't be a self respecting restaurant and not have a unique or quirky salad on the menu. Lazier places will just through dried cranberries in everything. I wish it stopped there. Instead, you are looking at a salad that resembles what a kindergarten class pulled up out of the field next to the baseball diamond. "I was wanting a salad, but i don't know how the mandarin oranges, beef tri-tip, rose petals, and dandelions are going to taste together". Watermelon is not a salad topping unless you are dehydrated in a desert. On the converse of this, i have no idea how anchovies got incorporated into Caesar dressing. Whatever the reason, it's delicious.

Conclusion

Although it may not sound like it, I love salads (healthy or otherwise). My problem is that people think they are eating something that is healthy but the opposite is true. People opting for the salad on their lunch break are trying to finish their work day with calories rendered from a watery oil mix and toppings, instead of an actual meal.