Salad is a dish that is made of small bits of ready-to-eat food, primarily vegetables. Salad is a common dish opted by those who seek a healthier lifestyle but at the same time they want some sort of simplicity.
It is also a versatile dish, which means it can be eaten at various segments of a course meal, be it as an appetizer, main course, side dish, or even a dessert. What differs in between each of them is the condiments they are served with.
Salads as an appetizer or a side dish are normally small and light in portion. Main course salads or otherwise known as entrée salads usually contain sources of protein such as chicken, beef, seafood, or even cheese to fulfill the nutritional needs within one meal course. Meanwhile, salads that are served as a dessert are sweet, seen from the presence of fruits, jellies, nuts, creams, or other sources of sweet flavours.
Types of Salads
Below are the common types of salads we consume according to its category.
- Garden Salads
Just like its name suggests, garden salads resemble actual gardens by its predominant composition of green vegetables. Vegetables commonly found inside garden salads include lettuce, celeries, spinach, cucumbers, paprika, tomatoes, onions, corn, mushroom, olives and more. It is then applied with dressings such as olive oil, vinegar, yogurt, mayonnaise or the thousand-island sauce. These are the health benefits of vegetable salads.
- Bound Salads
These are salads that are thick and more solid in texture due to the prevalent usage of mayonnaise as its dressing. Their solid texture has also made it possible to be made as sandwich fillings. Examples of bound salads include potato salad, tuna salad plus egg salad.
- Main Course/Entrée Salads
Main course or entrée salads are salads that contain pieces of protein sources, in which in this case they are meat pieces. These meat pieces may come in the form of chicken, beef, squid, prawns, or fishes such as salmon or tuna. The meats are prepared by light grilling or frying. One famous example of a main course salad is a Caesar salad.
The Caesar salad is a form of green salad that has also been recognized as an entrée salad. Caesar salads consists of condiments such as lettuce, croutons, egg, Parmesan cheese, bacon, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic as well as black pepper.Â
- Dessert Salads
Dessert salads contain almost no source of vegetables, with its primary composition being fruit, jellies, nuts as well as sweet dressings, hence its sweet taste. This type of salad is almost exclusively consumed at the end of a meal course or as a snack on its own. Two examples of fruit salad include the fruit cocktail and ambrosia.
Health Benefits of Eating Salad Every Day for a Month
Salads are a good way to start a healthy lifestyle but on the other hand you don’t want to endure extremities. These are the main reasons to why you should consider eating salad every single day for a month.
- Cheers You Up and Puts You in a Good Mood Most of the Time
A lot of vegetables and other foodstuffs inside salad are known to be the secret to a good mood. These foodstuffs include spinaches with vitamin B, mushrooms that contain depression-countering selenium, as well as seaweed that contains iodine, an anti-depression agent. Here are also the 7 unknown health benefits of seaweed for hair.
- Increased Energy Supply and Efficiency
This condition is caused by the dominant vitamin intake over sugar. Salads are indeed rich in vitamins, however certain vitamins such as vitamins A, D, E and K cannot be processed and maximized for the body without the help of fat. In this case, go for the unsaturated fats such as olive oil or canola oil when mixing with sources of the vitamins above.
In the long run, it efficiently distributes energy for a longer period of time without fearing the event of a sugar crash, which takes place somewhere mid-afternoon as a result of high sugar intake. Sugar crash is characterized by sudden tiredness, decrease in mood and cognitive skills.
- Boosts Daily Intake of Healthy Fats as well as Antioxidants
Your salad session can boost your daily dose of healthy fats, provided that you put in the right ingredients such as pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, avocado as well as raw nuts. Speaking of avocado, these are the health benefits avocado weight loss.
- Completes the Daily Fibre Needs
There are more health benefits of eating salad every day for a month. It has become a common knowledge that vegetables themselves are wealthy sources of fibre. Fibre is needed to reduce bad cholesterol (LDL), control blood sugar, accelerates digestion and bowel, better weight management and a guard to prevent terminal illnesses in the long run such as stroke, cancer, and also cardiovascular diseases.
- Better Weight Management
Salad is ideal for weight management thanks to its fibre rich vegetables it has. Fibre makes us full faster and better, therefore you will consume less calories than you might normally do.
- Minimizes the Need of Skin Care Products
High water content found inside the veggies maintains hydration to ourselves, which is also the key to excellent skin care and other bodily functions.
- Increased Salad Consumption Without You Realizing
Others who practice this month-long salad challenge have found themselves to be increasing their salad intake as they go through the later stages of this process. It is still not clear why this is so but then they claim that they started to appreciate the goodness of raw food as compared to cooked or processed foods. Thus, that’s all the health benefits of eating salad every day for a month. Â
Caution and Recommendations
Salad is one dish where one can express their creativity and preference through the ingredients they use to make it. However, the healthy advantages that salads can give depends greatly on what food items you use.
Sure, it can be tempting to pour generous amounts of Thousand Island or mayonnaise as your salad dressing. However, you must also realize that they are filled with high fructose and trans fats to improve flavour as well as storage life respectively.
Meanwhile fructose, just like any other sources of sugar increases the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes. After all, these are processed food items, and what better way to get maximum health benefits salad greens other than to use organic food items.
In this regard, it is best for you to use natural ingredients such as lemon juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar or honey as your ready-to-go salad dressing. Anyway, what are the health benefits of taking olive oil daily?