Benefits of Eating Vegetable Salad

Whether you’re looking to lose weight, improve your nutrition or simply adopt a healthier lifestyle, salads can be either your best friend or your worst enemy. Although they seem innocent enough, salads can quickly turn treacherous when they’re topped with creamy dressings and packed with fatty, high-calorie mix-ins. But if you make smart choices, you can build a healthy salad that’s not only tasty but healthy.

They're that healthy. Most of us are aware of this in a general sort of way. The specifics of their healthfulness are a bit less widely known, and specifically, salads are both full of heart-healthy, cancer fighting, cell-building ingredients and are fantastic weight-loss and weight-maintenance tools.

Really, it's hard to beat salad for slimming down. Leafy greens are one of the lowest-calorie foods out there -- one cup of romaine lettuce has 10 calories, and spinach has 7. Other raw vegetables are pretty impressive, too: Red peppers, carrots, and cucumbers have 20, 17 and 8 calories per 1/2 cup serving, respectively.

Muscle-Building Proteins

If your salad is the main course for your meal, don’t forget the protein. Protein provides amino acids, the building blocks for your body’s bones, muscles and cartilage. It’s also vital for the synthesis of enzymes and hormones. Skinless chicken or turkey breast, chunk light tuna or salmon are excellent choices. If you’re a vegetarian, stick with beans, legumes or egg whites to add a punch of protein.

Healthy Fats

A little bit of healthy fat helps your body absorb the nutrients in your salad. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should soak your salad with creamy, cholesterol-laden dressings. Instead, choose a drizzle of olive oil and a handful of olives, sunflower seeds, almonds or walnuts. For a creamier dressing, mash an avocado with a bit of olive oil. In addition to helping you absorb the veggies’ nutrients, healthy fats also provide vitamin E and selenium, help lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Still, you can eat a healthy salad even if you're not head-over-heels for the taste of spinach and straight lemon juice. Just follow a few guidelines:

• Extras -- Keep the high-calorie stuff light -- a sprinkle of crumbled feta cheese or raisins, a tablespoon of sunflower seeds, a half-cup of croutons.
• Dressing -- Choose up to 100 calories of low-fat or fat-free dressing, or put full-fat dressing on the side and dip each bite conservatively. For oil-based dressings, choose healthy oils like olive or flax seed.
• Protein -- Keep it lean (skinless chicken, fish, or ham) and small (3 ounces is a serving).

If you're thinking, "Sounds great -- if I had the time," you're in luck. If you spend a little bit more for prewashed romaine or spinach and prewashed, pre-chopped veggies, you're looking at a heart-clearing, cancer-fighting, skinny-jeans-friendly salad in about five minutes.