What's the Dressing? Salad dressings can pack a huge number of calories. A restaurant Caesar salad can be over 1,000 calories, largely due to the ingredients in the dressing!
Dressings are usually laden with sugar and filled with preservatives and unhealthy fat, and too often salads have additives like noodles, fried ingredients, taco chips or dried fruits. Often in restaurants salads are just a bunch of unhealthy ingredients assembled together -- think taco salad.
Restaurants have the scale and time to make big batches of grains, chop nuts and fruit, and bring in a complex array of greens, not to mention prepare luxurious accompaniments, like fried goodies or perfectly cooked meat — all things that might be too costly or time-consuming for a regular weeknight salad at home.
Restaurants tend to use more oils and fats, more sugar, and more salt in their food preparation. The reason is simple: if the food is yummy, you'll come back! But that tends to add up to a lot of extra calories you weren't counting on.
"Arugula salad is one of the greatest and safest salads you can order," said Slane. "As there are only a few ingredients required, most chefs take the time to source high-quality produce."
Salads made with a variety of fruits and vegetables make the perfect healthy lunch or dinner. That's because they're filled with tons of nutrients that benefit your body, like fiber, vitamin E, and vitamin C. These nutrients can work to lower your blood sugar, regulate cholesterol levels, and help you lose weight.
But beware — a salad does not always equal a healthy choice. Did you know that the average salad at your favorite restaurant contains about 1,000 calories, 12 or more grams of saturated fat, and a load of sodium?
All the restaurants and their trade association say that most calorie counts are as accurate as possible and tested extensively to make sure. They conceded that there are variations, mostly due to portion size and individual restaurant preparation, and that the menus warn actual calories may vary. What can you do?
As you can see from the chart below, oils are the most calorie-dense foods on the planet. Just two measly tablespoons of olive oil is the caloric equivalent of four oranges.
The highest calorie food (by volume!) is oil.
This means that oils are about four times as calorically dense as all-purpose flour. See below for a comparison of the calorie and fat content of one tablespoon of some common fats and oils.
Worst: Salad With Creamy Dressing
Dressings like ranch, blue cheese, and Thousand Island are often high in calories, unhealthy saturated fat, and sodium.
Unfortunately, restaurant salads can conceal a lot of extra fat and calories that make them no healthier than a burger or club sandwich.
They Use Perforated Container
The use of perforated bins is the key to keeping lettuce fresh and crisp at all times. Restaurants keep them in perforated containers to allow air circulation in the refrigerator. To keep its crispness, lettuce requires air and a small amount of moisture.
So, when it comes to your daily lunchtime dilemma, is a sandwich really less healthy than a salad? Leslie Ramirez, clinical dietitian at Houston Methodist, says that both can be healthy (and unhealthy) options — it all just depends on how you build your sandwich and how you build your salad.
Large amounts of prepared salad dressing or toppings such as cheese, dried fruits, and croutons can turn a healthy salad into a very high-calorie meal. Chunks of cheese, croutons, bacon bits, nuts, and seeds can increase the amount of sodium, fat, and calories in a salad.
On average, these restaurant meals contained 1,205 calories—about half of a person's typical daily recommendations. In all, 92% of the meals gave a typical eater more energy than they need at a single meal (570 calories, which the researchers used as a benchmark for typical energy requirements.)
As well as listing the calories for each food item, menus and labels will also need to include daily recommended calorie needs.
Japanese researchers have found that simply thinking about eating something sweet could cause you to store fat. They have conducted tests in mice and believe the findings will probably apply to humans too.
If you're following a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet and are enjoying the salad as a meal, says Siegel, aim for no more than 500 to 600 calories per serving.
In short, any food or meal can cause weight gain if you are eating too much of it or it is made with higher fat/calorie ingredients, even salad!
In fact, a striking amount of restaurant salads hide more than 1,000 calories in between the leafy greens, grilled proteins, and creamy dressings. Next time you're eating out, make sure to avoid the bowls here—they all pack in over a grand of calories!
You're eating too many calories.
Even if you're eating healthy, in order to lose weight you must be in a calorie deficit. Just eating all healthy food will not lead to weight loss if you're not working out and still taking in more energy than you burn.