Which salad dressings are healthiest?

Question

I noticed that many salad dressings contain high frutcose corn syrup as the second ingredient.

However, this is not true on all of them. For instance many ranch dressings do not have this.

Are there certain salad dressings that are healthier than others?

Answer 1

Anything creamy is going to be high in fat. You should avoid ranch, blue cheese, creamy italian. (I am hardly one to talk--ranch is my favorite and I'm not going to give it up. It makes my veggies tasty and eatting veggies is better than not eatting them).

What you are looking for idealy is something wtih a lot of taste/ spices. B/c if it is very flavorful you won't use as much of it on your salad.

Balsamic or Red Wine Vinegars are good for that. Honey Mustard (fat-free) is rather healthy too. Yes I would try to avoid ones that list corn syrup as the 1-3 ingredient but salad dressings in general aren't that healthy.

Also, since it is the taste that you want try putting spices on your salad before the dressing. Like Mrs Dash. Just get one with low sodium. Or use your own blend of the zest you like. Then you'll have the taste with less oil than a salad dressing.

The spritzers seem good since you cant clearly count the calories with each spritz. The problem with salad dressing is the amount. Most people put too much on their salad, and that makes the entire salad unhealthy. You use much less salad dressing if you order it on the side and dip each bite in dressing before eatting. When you dump it on the salad, it all goes to the bottom of the bowl leaving the bottom leaves soggy. If you spritz each bite or dip each bite in the dressing, you'll use half as much.

If you are really ms martha stewart--
Consider making your own salad dressing. It's very easy and you can use low fat ingredients. Lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, spices. There are lots of recipes online for salad dressing.

Answer 2

I second making your own, it really is very easy! Plus, you get a serving of oil in that way.

I use oil, vinegar, pepper, salt and garlic. Sometimes lemon juice. You can mix up your oil (canola, grapeseed, olive etc) and your vinegar types (red wine, balsamic etc)

Stay away from bottled dressings!

That being said, if I do get a bottled dressing for marinades, I like Drews. I find it in the "natural" section of Wegmans. NO HFCS or trans fat.

Answer 3

Be careful, ranch dressing is HIGH in fat and calories. Check out www.calorieking.com to help find a good dressing. I like to use the new spritzers (only 10 calories per serving) for a touch of zest.