Back to salad basics

I’m such a salad girl that I keep thinking of new salad tips and favorite ingredients I want to share! A salad can really be a shiny star of nutrition, but if it’s not filling enough, it can also be a meal that leaves you hungry in 2 hours. Or maybe that’s just me! Here’s a current combo I’m loving and I wanted to highlight the nutritional value of a few of these ingredients. Pumpkin seeds are easy to overlook but they are rich in healthy fats (we NEED those), zinc (hello immune system?!), and magnesium (most of us are deficient in it and it’s SO important for everything including anxiety) as well as fiber. They’re also rich in antioxidants that reduce inflammation and protect our cells from harmful free radicals (which can cause disease over time). They also may help prevent some cancers. Chickpeas are also a great protein and fiber addition and avocado gives you those all so important healthy fats as well as a lot of fiber too.

Current Salad Favorites

Ingredients:

• Greens… obviously. Recently I’ve been going back to arugula in my rotations. It’s a rock star for pretty much every vitamin, nutrient and antioxidants.

• Pumpkin Seeds (also called pepitas)

• Roasted or fresh chickpeas. I love the bagged roasted ones better than canned.

• Avocado

• Cucumbers

• Cheese. We’re still riding the grilled halloumi train — see my prior posts on that — but feta or any kind works.

• Whatever else you have!

• Remember my vinaigrette (olive oil, vinegar, dash of dijon, salt, pepper, italian herbs) that’s in my previous salad post, but if I’m really in a hurry I just throw splashes of olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and a sprinkle of the italian herbs which works well too.

PB & J

Let’s talk about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a minute. Few meals illustrate the idea of ingredients really matter better than this classic Americana staple. This is not a meal idea so much as a meal “lesson” but I hope you’ll hear me out. Especially if this is on your kids’ lunch rotation as much as it is in our house. Let’s take two options for each ingredient and look at the nutritional breakdown to see how things compare. Remember the more ingredients listed the more processed we can consider a food.

Ingredients:

• Bread

  • Nature’s Own Honey Wheat per slice - 2 grams sugar, 3 grams protein, 0.9 fiber, 24 ingredients total

  • Dave’s Killer Thin Style per slice - 2 grams sugar, 4 grams of protein, 3 grams of fiber, 12 ingredients total

• Peanut Butter

  • Costco Organic Natural Peanut Butter - 2 TBSP serving: 0 added sugar. 1 ingredient. No inflammatory oils

  • Jif Creamy - 2 TBSP serving: 2 grams added sugar. 5 ingredients. Contains Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils. (Worst kind of fat == we don’t want any hydrogenated oils…. at all!!)

• Grape Jelly

  • Crofter’s Organic Grape Jelly: 1 TBSP serving: 8 grams added sugar. 5 ingredients. (Several other brands - like Polamer all fruit - contain only 5-6 grams of added sugar per TBSP).

  • Smucker’s Grape Jelly: 1 TBSP serving: 9 grams added sugar. 6 ingredients including High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Quick takeaways: There’s a huge difference in total ingredients between the breads as well as a significant difference in fiber. Peanut Butter that contains hydrogenated oil is a big avoid. And getting any extra sugar here when you already have jelly really adds up. Also, any jam or jelly with high fructose corn syrup would be one to avoid.