A topic that I have often considered quite ironic is salads. Whenever someone wants to feel really healthy the first thing that they turn to is a salad. Now don't get me wrong. I love salads, but my last post about my high fructose corn syrup searching trip to Wegmans got me thinking about all of the things that we put on salads.  I don't know about you, but there a few things that I find to be absolutely essential to my salad.  I love salad dressing and I love eating croutons.  Well now we know that the salad dressing is sugar laden, but did you ever consider how many calories are added with the croutons, the cheese, the bacon bits etc? To my surprise one day standing in Wendy's waiting for my food I saw the nutrition chart on the wall.  I expected that the salads would be the most healthy, but I couldn't believe it when I saw that their Baja Salad had a whopping 540 calories which comprised, 32 grams fat, 14 grams saturated fat, and 1600 mg sodium (70% daily value)! But that's not the worst of it.  The salad by itself is 540 calories, while the dressing and added tortilla strips knocked the total up to 720 calories. That is nearly half of your daily calories just in one sitting. Plus, who goes to McDonalds and doesn't get a drink to go with their food?

So, the moral of the story isn't "Don't eat salads!", but rather watch what goes into your salad. Chicken in salads is better grilled than fried. If you like crunch, add apples instead of croutons.  Skip the cheese and try oil and vinegar dressing instead of processed dressings.

Another thing to think about is this. Is getting a salad that is primarily stocked with calories from fat better than just getting a nutritious small meal? For my part I'd rather go for Wendy's chili, which is more nutritious and less fat laden than their salads...