Diet

6 Shocking Reasons Your Salad Is a Fat Bomb

You skip the bacon bits and shredded cheese, but are these common salad toppings sabotaging your healthy-eating efforts?

by Erica Smith

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Sometimes, there's nothing more rewarding than mustering up the strength to say "I'll just have a salad" come lunchtime. It makes me feel all high and mighty. And, in fairness, my "I'll have a salad" days are usually preceded by a string of drive-thru trips, late night pizza, and back-to-back birthday parties. A pat on the back for bypassing French fries for a plate of lettuce seems appropriate, no?

Food guilt aside, I've also upped my salad consumption because a salad is easy to assemble on a lunch break. Just pack some lettuce and a few salad toppings and bam, insta-meal.

Now, I don't sprinkle bacon bits over my bed of lettuce, but when it comes to salad toppings, my motto is "the more the merrier." Olives? Why not! Corn? Pile it on! If I'm at the salad bar at Whole Foods, my salad always weighs in above an acceptable weight class for a plastic container full of vegetables. And so the rationalizations begin: It's still technically a "salad," so I'm good to go, right? Wrong.

I asked a dietician to analyze my typical salad and she told me it's just a fat salad in disguise. Sure, it's (mostly) green and contains some vegetables, but if I don't step on the brakes to really consider all of my salad toppings, I might as well just be eating a burrito or burger.

Of course, we all know to avoid cheese, creamy dressings, and everyone's favorite offender, the crouton. But there are plenty of other, more sneaky salad toppings that can sabotage this supposedly healthier meal option. So I asked nutritionists and dieticians to reveal the unassuming salad toppings that are making my salad (and yours!) a total fat bomb, as well as what to toss on top of that baby spinach instead. How many of these ingredients are making your current go-to salad a fat bomb?

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