Back when I had a little bit of money and was living alone, I used to eat out here and there. I used to eat salads thinking they were good for my weight, but I was wrong. I am just letting people know this incase they eat these salads too. There are a few on here that I used to eat. If I would have known back then, I would have gotten a cheeseburger.
http://health.yahoo.net/experts/eatthis/6-salads-worse-whopper
And this is news to you? I don’t like cheese in my salads so I always avoided these salads but when I saw one, I would try in my mind to ungrate the cheese in a salad to see what a block of cheese that would be and I would think wow. I wouldn’t put that much cheese on a pizza.
Of course this makes you an ingrate, you know.
this is positively degrating.
Yes, expect no grateness out of Mute’s salads.
…I was just looking over what they were calling salads in TWC’s link. Thing is, in our language “salad” ends up meaning just about any (usually) cold dish if you set it up right, so there’s no reality to the idea that because it’s called a salad it’s necessarily low-cal OR healthy, whatever that means. A salad can be as simple as lettuces with lemon juice and pepper, to cole slaw (often with mayo and so the calories jump), to - it’s a stretch - let’s say an arrangement of chilled sliced skin-on roast goose, hardboiled egg, parmesan crisps, and croutons with a cranberry-walnut vinaigrette over leafy stuff and/or chilled cooked veggies for that desperate nod to healthy-looking plating.
Is the last a salad or not? Depends on who’s writing the menu. It’s convenient to call it one.
Then there’s your Thai restaurant, where a “salad” can be a chilled noodle dish.
If you think of heating a lot of this stuff up, although it’s the same thing, if it holds up to the thought experiment all of a sudden it starts looking very different. For example, meat and noodle dishes could probably be as fine hot or cold in a lot of cases. A lot of those dishes in the link looked to me like they’d be just as fine hot, too. Healthy? Depends. Calories? Probably. But if you imagine heating up just lettucey stuff, you know it will not work for happy eating. Or at least for such as we count as normal. So by that imaginary measure, calorie-wise you should be good to go with greens. Well, so long as you aren’t adding on a creamy roquefort dressing or mountains of cheesy goodness.
Hot cole slaw, though…someone else try, and let me know.
You want to watch out for salads? Watch out for THESE!
(term “salad” used advisedly, and in consideration of 1950s era norms.)
I will take a disco flashing light jello mold salad to my next covered dish. Praise be emm.
Those, plus the classic lime Jell-O mold “salad” with shredded carrot and riced cream cheese, are still down-home traditional old-school standard potluck funeral foods hereabouts. Find the right small town, and all you need is a church basement and coffee.
The LED thing is a bit new-fangled, though.
Basically, if you have specific dietary needs don’t assume any broad category of dishes is all within what you are after.
Zackly. Something listed as a “bargain” may in fact actually be one, but that doesn’t mean you’d better buy it 'cause that’s what it is. Bargain or not, it could still cost you plenty more than you should sanely afford.
yer remindin’ me of
“Free Horse”
buy the bridge & take yerself out to dinner with the savings
I used to go vegetarian in the summers, eating a lot of salads and such. I decided not to do that for health and conscience reasons. I almost never eat out, and never did then. But my own salads had some cheese, and more importantly, I would only eat salads with fatty dressings, mostly blue cheese. Now I’m a good 75% carnivore for health reasons. Fajitas made with lean chicken, Indian dishes with chicken, etc., are all way better than cheese and salad dressing. No, I haven’t completely given up cheese, salad, or pizza, but all in moderation.
Sometimes even fairly straightforward lettuce salads with vinaigrette have more calories than you might think. I used to order salad at Olive Garden, thinking it was a fairly low-calorie appetizer. Come to find out that a serving of OG’s salad (with their regular house dressing, which is a simple vinaigrette) has more than 300 calories, whereas a serving of their minestrone soup has only 100 calories (and, to my mind, is a lot tastier and more filling). Three guesses as to which I order now!
Redwolf
Exactly!! Had I known that a salad at Wendys was twice the calories/sodium/fat as a chesseburger, I would have definitely loaded up on those. 
wellll…we all have brains and it would be expected that we know how to us these…aka we CAN think.
and we can ask questions if needed (is that a lowfat dressing? can I have the salad without? or on th side? can I have the xxxxx grilled instead?)
it was downright scary to read through those sites named above (did also view the links)
and no, netherlands is not much better than USA…I think.
good thing is that there still are salad bars in some places…
As I was saying, sometimes it’s not obvious which items are likely to be higher in fat/calories…and the waiter doesn’t necessarily know either. That’s why the state of California requires restaurants to provide nutritional information: so diners can make informed decisions. I’m pretty food-savvy, and I’ve been shocked at some of the nutritional information I’ve seen since that law was passed.
Redwolf
And another thing going on with salads is the dressing. Take a look at the sodium level in store bought dressings. Yikes. I make my own Italian with 0 sodium. When my nephew was visiting, he wanted French dressing. I got a recipe on-line, made it in a blender and would never buy that store crap again. There is a raw egg in the French dressing so you have to be committed to using it quickly.