Yes, salad dressing. You never suspected a thing did you? But if your switch from plate lunches to salads hasn’t helped you loose weight/lower your blood sugar/lower your triglycerides, it’s because you are pouring deadly trans fat onto those crispy, vitamin-rich greens.
The other secret ingredient in many salad dressings is sugar. Why do you want to pour sugar on vegetables? Yuck.
Store bought salad dressings are almost never made of olive oil, even the ones that say “So and So’s organic Olive oil dressing.” Bologna. Turn the bottle around and look at the ingredients, there may be some olive oil, but with olive oil costing ten times as much as the other, cheaper oils, you can bet there’s not very much.
Refining Oils Makes Them Bad For You
Most salad dressings contain “one or more of the following:” canola, corn oil, sunflower oil, soy oil, cottonseed oil, or the catch-all “vegetable oil.” All of these oils are bad for us. Not because corn or sunflower seeds are bad for us (though I wouldn’t advise eating cottonseeds), but because the manufacturing steps required to extract the oil from the seed and refine it so that it looks clean and edible turn the molecules of oil fat (called polyunsaturated fat) into mutant fats that include trans fat and other compounds that are worse for us than trans fat!
Preventing Vitamin and Nutrient Loss
Even worse, if you eat store bought salad dressing, you may as well be throwing the salad right down the toilet. When your body detects high levels of polyunsaturated fat it stops the normal process of digesting fats in its tracks. This is why you may have heard polyunsaturated fats “lower cholesterol.” They actually prevent your body from absorbing all kinds of fats, including cholesterol, but also fat-soluble vitamins A, E, and K, as well as other nutrients like lecithin, phospholipids, and choline – all of which your body and especially your brain require to be healthy. If you want those vitamins to enter your body, you must consume them with a very special fat: Saturated fat!! Of all things, saturated fat…the very fat the AHA, the ADA, the AMA, and most doctors on the planet tell us all to avoid. Monounsaturated fat, which olive and peanut oils contain in abundance, also helps aid nutrient digestion.
Make Your Own Dressing: It’s Super Easy!!
If you like salad, made your own salad dressing. All you need is:
a) olive oil
b) balsalmic vinegar (or your favorite vinegar)
c) hands
What could be easier than pouring two bottles of fluid over a bowl of salad? OK pouring one bottle would be easier. So if you are serious about salad, combine the two fluids in a container of some sort that you can store in the fridge.
The ideal ratio of oil to vinegar is 3 to 1, meaning use 3 times as much olive oil as vinegar. Of course, adding a pinch or two of salt, a few drops of lemon, and if you’re really motivated, some fresh chopped garlic, will make it even tastier, and better for you. (Salt helps your body emulsify the fats with vitamins, and garlic is full of antioxidants.)
Here’s some more Dr. Cate approved recipes:
Start ‘em easy: Basic Vinagrette
1/2 C olive oil
shy 1/4 C red wine vinegar OR rice vinegar
1 T lemon juice
1/2 tsp each oregano, thyme and mustard powder
1/4 tsp each black pepper and garlic powder
dash of cayenne and Salt
Shake, chill and serve.
Easy Dijon Vinagrette-prepare one night ahead
1/2 C olive oil
2 T each plain non-fat yoghurt, lemon juice and red wine vinegar
1 T Dijon mustard 1/4 tsp each garlic powder, sage, thyme, basil and oregano
Combine in a blender at medium-high speed. Chill overnight before serving.
Now for the more committed: Not On The First Date Olive Oil Dressing
1/2 C olive oil
shy 1/4 C red wine vinegar
1 medium shallot, minced, or 2 T red onion, minced
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp basil
1/4 tsp McCormick’s Spicy blend, or other general purpose spice blend
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp Jane’s Krazy Mixed Up Salt
Combine in blender at top speed for about a minute, so that all of the onion or shallot is reduced. The result should be a creamy pink dressing. Chill overnight in refrigerator. The result is a mild, oniony dressing with a slightly sweet edge.
Southwestern Vinagrette
1/2 C olive oil
shy 1/4 C white or rice wine vinegar
1 tsp mustard powder
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cilantro
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cumin
Shake, chill and serve. If you generally top your salad with cheese, pair this dressing with a mild cotija or colby. Avoid sharp or bitter cheeses such as bleu and feta.
Basil Sesame Dressing
1/4 tsp garlic powder
3 T rice wine vinegar
1 T lemon juice
2 T asiago or the cheese of your choice
1/2 tsp dried basil
2-4 leaves of fresh basil
2 T chopped Italian or regular parsley
1/2 C olive oil
1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1/4 tsp black pepper
Combine in blender until thoroughly mixed. Chill and serve with a green salad. It’s a spooky color but tastes great.
Cilantro-Lime Vinagrette
1/2 C olive oil
2 T plain yoghurt
2 T lemon juice
2 T rice vinegar
1/4 C fresh, shreaded cilantro leaves, tightly packed
1/4 tsp each garlic powder, thyme and black pepper
1/8 tsp cumin
a squeeze of fresh lime juice – about a quarter lime
Combine in a blender until fully mixed. Chill and serve. I always see those cilantro leaves wilting in Sueoka store in Koloa. Please, come and get um before they wilt or the store will stop carrying them!!!
>Related Posts:
Dear Dr. Cate, with all due respect, let me propose a change to your recipes, the replacement of canola for olive. Olive is horribly deficient in antiarrhythmic anti inflammatory omega-3, so much so that we have a pre-packaged blend of 55% omega-3 with 0.5% omega-3 olive on Canadian store shelves: picture
http://www.health-heart.org/Olive+Linseed=OLINDA.JPG
However, it is still MUCH below the 10% omega-3 found in dirt cheap store shelf canola oil which has a safe low level of [inflammatory] omega-6 [20%] compared with virtually all ‘vegetable’ oils that are sold on the same shelf and that have typically 50% or more of that inflammatory linoleic acid.
When I give talks about heart disease prevention, I carry my literature and props in a canola oil pail and call the stuff “defibrillator on a salad” which truly it is, based on the famous LYON study and on other data. More in the top section of the link with this posting.
MONO unsaturated fatty acid including olive has NEVER been shown to have health benefit on its own in a clinical trial, and it is one of the ways we make and store our belly fat. Expensive olive oil is heavily promoted because the oil marketeer to the world, UNILEVER, owns much of it, eg Bertolli and other makes. I have olive in my fridge but I know it won’t prevent a heart attack; canola, flax and if you cannot find either soy WILL, based on their omega-3 content [walnut is 10% omega-3 like canola but is very high in omega-6, like soy, and it is expensive].
Here’s fatty acid compositions of oils:
http://www.health-heart.org/FattyAcidTable.gif
P.S. modern processing techniques apart from hydrogenation DON’T damage the oils and NOT getting your omega-3′s [plant AND fish based] is infinitely more dangerous than what could possibly be done to those oils, infinitely.
Dear Eddie:
I appreciate your concern over the general shortage of Omega-3 fatty acids in the American diet. However, this is due in part to the fact that Omega-3 fatty acids are heat sensitive, and can be destroyed during processing. So consuming processed, heated oils will not give us very much Omega-3. In fact, tests have shown that organic, expeller pressed canola oil contains the oxidized breakdown products of omega-3 oils, some of which are trans fatty acids including the highly toxic 4-hydroxy-trans-2-noneal (HNE). You can read more at the Weston Price Foundation’s website, and in my forthcoming book, Feed Me Pretty.
I wish Canola Oil were good for us, it’s in EVERYTHING!
Dear Dr. Cate,
I respectfully disagree that commercially available cooking/salad canola has any of these substances since the manufacturers avoid the abnormal conditions of ‘deodorization’ that are generated ON PURPOSE by researchers. The Canadian labeling for ‘on special’ $3/3 litre canola report no trans fat which means less than 1% but the reality is much less than that. U.S. stick margarine has 25%!!
My point was that the danger of canola is NOT getting enough, a study shown mortality risk in those not getting a total of 2 g/d, i.e. just under 2 table spoons.
I don’t make money from canola; it bugs me that this life-saving unique oil is not embraced as the “poor man’s defribrillator on a salad” which it is.
No other commercial oil apart from mustard in India comes close.
I am a member of ISSFAL [Int'l Soc for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids] and have followed the fatty acid field for over a decade as an independent researcher. I’d vouch for the correctness of what is reported here: http://www.canola-council.org/canola_oil_the_truth.aspx Its literature list is a great resource to those scientifically inclined: http://www.canola-council.org/canolabib/default.aspx
It’s expensive and stupid to generate trans fats in processing, so the levels are low; here are some of their references:
http://www.canola-council.org/search.aspx?keywords=trans+content
Here are the technical standards: http://www.canola-council.org/oil_tech.aspx good stuff!
http://www.canola-council.org/uploads/Oilprocessing.pdf a good text
http://www.canola-council.org/uploads/Chemical7-12.pdf see its figure 9: solvent extraction raises vitamin E about 3 fold over ‘cold pressed’.
http://www.canola-council.org/uploads/Chemical1-6.pdf see figure 6 for the fatty acids but as importantly, Table 6 gives you how to avoid making trans fats! Sorry about this over load of science but this is the point at hand. Kind regards, Eddie
Oops. I have been using Paul Newman’s salad dressing for a few years now since most of the cheaper salad dressings used to give me heart palpitations and an uncomfortable sick feeling after consuming it. Yes, you are right and my GP recently suggested the same thing, its just safer to stick to making your own salad dressing with the basic vinegar and olive oil. Too bad Hawaii has no palm oil industry. I sure hope that the olive oil that I bought from Costco is pure olive oil and not something else. Mahalo for the salad dressing recipes.
Hi Cate! My dad sent me this post since he knew I would be interested in it. I’m studying nutrition right now so anything food related is of interest to me!
Do you know anything about Annie’s Naturals salad dressings? Apparently they are all natural and organic, so I was just curious if they were better than the rest…
Anyway, I am going to check out the rest of your website! Check out ours too if you have a chance, we have over 400 recipes and healthy living tips up there! http://ezhomecooking.wordpress.com/
Best,
Zoe
HI Zoe, I’ve been relocating and usually don’t have such a long delay before replies! Thanks for your patience. I addressed salad dressing in a post about vegetable oil here. Just because something is organic doesn’t mean the manufacturers don’t add sugar and trans-fat rich vegetable oil so you always need to check ingredients!
[...] will you please kill the salad dressing. All you need is a little olive oil to bring out the flavor of the veggies and/or a spritz of lemon [...]