Wednesday, March 28, 2012

What about Salads?


Warning:

25% of this leaf is made into fresh cut salads. It wants you to believe it has as much nutritional value as its brothers and sisters but it doesn’t.  The only thing it’s good for is weight loss because its high water content equals low calories. But a large portion of what calories it does have comes from sugar. Its main use is for its texture and crispiness. It makes you believe you’re eating healthy when you’re not.




Now don’t get me wrong Iceberg Lettuce has iron, fiber, Vitamin A,C,K and B6 in it but you can get all that and more from Romaine Lettuce.  I used to eat Iceberg Lettuce all the time a few years ago.If I wanted to be healthy I’d go make a salad. It would consist of Iceberg Lettuce, a couple cucumbers, and a ton of ranch dressing.  After I finished eating I’d pat myself on the back for being healthy.  I later found out that I wasn’t helping myself at all this way. Romaine Lettuce was what I should have been using. Also I should have been piling on the other vegetables and not using Ranch dressing.

I’m not the only one who has looked at salad made with Iceberg as a way of being healthy. I had a friend who joined the biggest loser competition on my college campus. She started eating salads made up of Iceberg lettuce, a few vegetables and ranch dressing every day.  She couldn’t understand why she didn’t lose more than 5 pounds.

Iceberg lettuce is tasty and I do love its crunchy texture. It doesn’t hurt to mix it in with Romaine as long as the salad has more Romaine in it. I grew up eating Iceberg so switching was hard for me because it’s what I liked and was used to.  I’m happy though that if I eat salad now I do it right; little dressing, mostly Romaine lettuce, and tons of vegetables.

4 comments:

  1. Deanna,

    I thought this post was cute how you had the "warning" at the beginning of the post. I was immediately interested because I was wondering what you were warning me about, so great attention grabber! I wish this post was longer though! It was interesting but very short. Maybe if you added some more about you because the part about you piling on the ranch was funny and relatable. I think the video at the end was cool but I would try to include something more relevant to the posts like maybe a nutritionist talking about why iceberg lettuce isn't all that healthy. Great post though! :)
    -Molly

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    1. I could nott find a video that talked about the health benefits of iceberg lettuce or the lack of benefits. Everything I found was on growing it or coring or something along those lines, so I thought I'd put in something different. I'm glade you told me it didn't really work though because I was very unsure of it myself.

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  2. I too liked the warning disclaimer at the beginning of the post to draw my attention. As someone who likes to eat a salad a day to get in my vegetable servings, iceberg lettuce used to be my greens of choice, but I made the transition over to Romaine lettuce for no reason other than to try something new. I even experimented with spinach salads and found that I liked those too. I found this post to be very educational because I never imagined that iceberg lettuce has as much sugar as you are suggesting. I figured it was just water with a little bit of vitamins and minerals. I had no idea just how much healthier Romaine lettuce is compared to iceberg lettuce. I would have liked a seen a little bit more of the misconceptions about creating a salad, because a lot of people I know think that a salad is always healthy. Some people are oblivious to the fact that if you smother it with meats and cheeses and top it off with Caesar dressing that it can end up costing you more calories than a cheeseburger and fries. Good post though.

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  3. Good short post packed with useful information. If I was someone interested in counting calories, this would definitely be important to know. One suggestion I do have though is maybe add in a few related graphics? Like a nice big romaine lettuce leaf, or somebody chomping down on one. That would be cool.

    Cool!
    -Alex Bissell

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