The 4 dangers of “Salad Thinking”
People often tell me they eat salads all the time and wonder if that isn’t a sure sign they’re eating healthy.
Certainly, eating salads is a good thing–and it sure beats having a side of Cheetos for dinner! But is it enough to automatically qualify you for “healthy eating status?” That’s a little trickier, since there are definitely some potential dangers of “Salad Thinking.”
First, Salad Thinking can mislead you into being less vigilant and watchful about the rest of your diet. “Hey, you had a salad for lunch! It’s OK to eat that side of Cheetos for dinner!” This kind of thinking can easily justify having many of the other non-foods and half-foods filling our grocery store shelves and restaurant menus. Think the warm white bread served before a restaurant meal, a hip new white pasta dish at a fast-casual place, and a cool vegetarian wrap made with a white flatbread. Or think about the mound of fluffy white rice included with Chinese take out; the sugars in desserts and candy; and the preservatives, colorings and flavors in snack foods and frozen and canned meals and fast foods.
Obviously, eating salad doesn’t give you free reign to ignore the quality of the rest of your diet. You still need to be eating a diet of 100% real, whole foods, i.e., whole grains, tons of vegetables, fruits, clean proteins, good fats, nuts, seeds and legumes.
Second, Salad Thinking can make you believe that you should be able to function with full energy and mental clarity on a handful of rabbit food. A salad actually needs to feed you well and fully–either as part of a full meal or as a complete meal itself.
Remember there is a point to eating: Giving your body the nutrients needed to not only stay alive but to nourish every last cell of your body, from brain to toes. That point often gets lost in the battle to stay thin or navigate the various diet wars, but those objectives are meaningless unless you can function optimally on all levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
So whatever your usual healthy plate looks like, that’s what a salad needs to look like, too! For example, I do best with a balance of all of vegetables, fruits, starches, proteins, fats, nuts, seeds and legumes in my diet. So my salad meals include all those components, too–either atop the salad or on the rest of my plate. (See some examples here.)
There’s a good chance you’re different than me. You may be on a low-carb, or lower-fat, or plant-based, or higher-fat diet. Great! Whatever your dietary approach, make sure your salads reflect the kind of meal you would normally make to fully satisfy and feed you well.
In one of our classes on salads, a participant mentioned that she hates salads because they always leave her feeling hungry. Bingo! If you are just eating a little lettuce with some low calorie celery, tomatoes and cabbage for color, no doubt you will be hungry in an hour or two–because you won’t be getting the real nutrition you need.
Worse yet, you’ll be extremely vulnerable to overeating at the next meal–or indulging in some yummy treat to “reward yourself” and satisfy your poor deprived taste buds.
Third, Salad Thinking can lull you into eating more than you normally would. The flip side of Danger #2 is that we use a bed of salad greens as justification to load up on ingredients normally eaten in greater moderation.
You might remember a time when fast food restaurants hopped on the health bandwagon and started selling salads. It sounded great, until we learned that the dressing and cheese topping contained a day’s worth of fat and calories. Making matters worse, the salad itself was a nutritionally pitiful combination of iceberg lettuce, flavor-less tomatoes, a few carrot shreds and some highly processed turkey product.
So even though a food comes atop of a bed of salad greens, be sure to exercise your usual degree of balance and moderation, especially with regards to non-vegetable food components, e.g., the meats, cheeses, dressings, nuts and so on. Of course with regards to the vegetables, eat your heart out!
Fourth, when you’re enamored with Salad Thinking, it’s easy to drift into a food rut, depriving your body of critical nutritional diversity and depth. Salads can potentially be a vehicle for all sorts of diet diversity, especially in terms of fruits and vegetables. But consider your usual salad: Do you go through the salad bar, picking out the same toppings, time after time? Or how about in the produce aisle–do you always pick out the same few, easy-prep items, rarely considering new ideas in your rush to get through the store?
When I was growing up, “salad” was synonymous with a combo of iceberg lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes. Again, that’s not bad, but by taking up the “vegetable slot” on a plate, this trio foreclosed us from cashing in on the extraordinary nutritional benefits of all other members of the vegetable kingdom.
Microbiome Benefits Surely you’ve been hearing about the microbiome and the intimate relationship between its health and your health. Well, diet diversity is a key component of a healthy microbiome.
In a recent diabetes webinar, dietician Brenda Davis* discussed the importance of fiber for a healthy gut. She explained that many foods are good sources of fiber, from beans, barley, oats and flax to avocados, plums, citrus, beets, Brussels sprouts and leafy greens. All are sources of the soluble/fermentable fibers that the gut microbiome can use as fuel and ferment into the short chain fatty acids that help prevent insulin resistance.
In the past, dietary experts have focused their advice on getting an adequate quantity of fiber. Brenda cautioned her listeners to focus equally on quality:
“It’s not just a matter of getting a certain amount, but also getting the right kinds, which is a matter of diversity. You want to get fiber from as many different foods as you can because the types of fiber they contain are different: Cellulose, hemicellulose, lignans and gums it just goes on and on. We want the whole works to get the maximum benefit.”
So if salads are going to fill the “vegetable slot” on your plate, make sure they include a wide and ever-changing diversity of vegetable, fruit and other toppings. You’ll make not only your taste buds but also your microbiome very happy!
Get started by checking out this post for 3 Diet Diversity Salads
* Brenda Davis, R.D., is a leader in plant-based nutrition, and an internationally acclaimed speaker. The author of 10 award-winning books, she has worked as a public health nutritionist, clinical nutrition specialist, nutrition consultant and academic nutrition instructor. Excerpt taken from Mastering Diabetes 2019 Summit.