Healthify your supermarket choices.
Are You Still Buying Salad Dressing?
- Image by kurafire via Flickr
The word salad conjures, for most people, mounds of iceberg lettuce, a few other veggies, and a hefty ladle of dressing. As with many things, the US did not invent it, but in the last 50 years we have elevated salad dressing to a billion dollar industry with hundreds of varieties awaiting us in a special condiments aisle in the supermarket. You know something is big when it has its own trade organization.
In southern Europe and the Mediterranean, a salad is dressed by mixing some fresh lemon juice, a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and drizzling on top of a freshly cut salad. It seems that here, though, folks cannot complete that basic task and therefore gladly pay $3.00-$4.00 for a bottled solution. The price paid isn’t just monetary, as there are ingredients in some commercial dressings that are better kept away from our bodies.
What you need to know:
Let’s take a look at the most popular dressing family – Italian Dressing. This is an American invention, nobody over in Italy has heard of it. It’s very similar to vinaigrette dressings – an emulsion of oil, vinegar, herbs and spices. Th emulsion of oil and vinegar is what brings the salad to life. Even if you are counting calories, having some oil in a salad dressing is actually important, because it helps the body better absorb oil-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. The problem is that many people tend to overdo it.
Unfortunately commercial brands of salad dressing also include the following:
water – The cheapest ingredient you can put in a bottle, except maybe for air.
sugar , corn syrup, HFCS - Yep, you like your salad sweet don’t you?
salt – a serving of 2 tablespoons can contain as much as 500mg or 20% of your daily maximum intake.
phosphoric acid (E338) -An artificial additive that provides a tangy taste for a much cheaper price than lemons. It is also used in soft drinks. Some studies have linked it to lowering bone density.
Calcium Disodium EDTA – A preservative with a mildly salty taste. May cause kidney damage, and blood in urine.
Xantham Gum E415 – increases the viscosity of a liquid.
What to do at the supermarket:
Skip the dressings, just get a good bottle of olive oil and lemons or lemon juice.
You can easily make vinaigrette at home by mixing 3 parts olive or canola oil with 1 part vinegar or lemon juice and adding salt and pepper to taste. Additional herbs and spices can be added according to your preferences. No artificial preservatives, no excess sodium, no HFCS.
Feel free to suggest simple home made recipes in the comments below…
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It’s not making the salad dressing that presents a challenge to me, it’s the KEEPING it! How quickly will salad dressing go bad if kept in a jar in the fridge? What if there are herbs or chopped garlic in the jar? If I make the dressing with balsamic vinegar instead of lemon juice, will that help to preserve any additions I make to the dressing? I know they add preservatives to just about everything just so it can sit on the shelves for years, but how quickly will my homemade dressing go bad without it?
Also, just a small, friendly note – I appreciate the information and all, but lines like this: “It seems that here, though, folks cannot complete that basic task and therefore gladly pay $3.00-$4.00 for a bottled solution” sound pretty darn condescending this reader, at least. Just FYI – if you’re actually looking to convert people who currently purchase salad dressing, you might start by not insulting their intelligence.
Use olive oil and vinegar and put whatever herbs and spices you want in it. Keep in an olive oil pourer outside the fridge. One that has an air stopper. Olive and other oils are NOT refrigerated. They will keep for at least one year. Also, the herbs and other spices have time to completely saturate into the oil. It will get better and stronger with time. Only mayo, egg and dairy based dressings need be refrigerated. Never fridge your homemade italian it will actually taste better room temp. Use it for dipping bread into as well, yum
That is good to know about the room temp. I just never really even thougth about it. I have always feed house full of men so never realy had to worry about left overs of any thing, but now that the house size is getting smaller, I will have to start looking into things like that. So, I imagine that an old evoo bottle would work as well. I have a pourer but not to sure about how good the seal is on it, or does that not matter? ( as long as it is good enough to keep foreign objects out)
Keep it? I just slam it all together after the salad is in the bowl, every night before dinner. I use: drizzle of olive oil, splash of balsamic vinegar, smaller drizzle of maple syrup (NOT TABLE SYRUP), and pepper. Sweet and salty but not in excess. Oh, and slivered almonds on top. The whole process takes about 30 seconds, and now my fridge is not full of bottles of chemicals. Hooray!