Is your salad making you fat?
By Alice Hart-Davis, Evening Standard
18 January 2005
Salads are always good for the waistline, right? Wrong. Many are loaded with more than a Big Mac's 493 calories and 22.9g fat, discovers Alice Hart-Davis. Here are the worst offenders and some healthier options.
Colourful layers of mixed vegetables and lightly dressed pasta, topped with mayonnaise and Red Leicester cheese. What you see, when you look at this salad, is a solid layer of cheese and that is, largely, what is doing the damage here - helped out by the mayonnaise that coats the pasta and the vinaigrette that has soused the vegetables (does a salad really need both?).
And, sneakily, the packaging gives calorie-and-fat counts for a 225g portion ... which may be a more sensible ration, looking at the astonishingly high calorie and fat figures, but who, in all honesty, is going to have the strength of mind to eat only half of the bowlful?
The healthy option: (from the same place) Healthy Living Tuna Snack Salad, 252 calories, 2.7g fat per 300g pack. £1.99
Pasta topped with mixed leaf, sweetcorn and chunky cucumber, flaked tuna and cherry tomatoes with a pot of low-fat vinaigrette - and a lemon wedge to garnish.
One third of the pack is pasta, so it doesn't feel too insubstantial (the thing about lettuce leaves is that they take up a good deal of space in a plastic pack, but don't fill the stomach for very long), and there is a good helping of tuna, the protein in which will slow down the rate at which the carbohydrate in the pasta is utilised by the body, so it should keep you feeling full until teatime. And since the calorie count is so low, you may as well make the most of the dressing, too.
PRET A MANGER
The baddie: Chef Salad, 559 calories, 39.2g fat per 310g pack. £3.80.
Described as "a healthy, wholesome salad: chicken breast, bacon, greve, cheese, red onions, baby plum tomatoes and fresh basil ..." it looks as fresh and appetising as all Pret's offerings. But, bless 'em, they're generous with the cheese - - there are three sizeable folded strips of it and there is a good scattering of bacon before you start to consider the calories that may be lurking in the pot of dressing in the middle. Good, but not that good.
The healthy option: Crayfish Salad bowl, 149 calories, 6.3g fat per 240g pack. £3.60
Remarkably low in calories for what looks like such an appetising dish, but then a large part of it is fresh salad leaves and cucumber. There is a large helping of crayfish which is lowfat protein and therefore makes the salad more filling than it might appear.
SAINSBURY
The baddie: Chicken and Bacon Ranch Salad, 521 calories, 36.7g fat per 280g pack. £2.
Chicken (seven per cent) and bacon (four per cent) with pasta in a "ranch-style" mayonnaise, which accounts for 18 per cent of the dish. There's a scattering of carrot strands, a lining of lettuce leaves, and the odd niblet of sweetcorn, but not much to write home about, health-wise. Pasta forms 29 per cent of the salad, Add a pinch of stabilisers and preservatives, and it's not a great choice.
The healthy option: Magic Mushrooms from Fresh! Gourmet Organics (not Sainsbury's own brand), 199 calories, 3.5g fat per 245g pack. £2.79
Organic grilled mushroom, tofu and sesame noodle salad with hoi-sin sauce. This will appeal to anyone wanting something a bit more adventurous than the standard tuna and pasta combination.
MARKS AND SPENCER
The baddie: Pasta with chicken, smoked bacon and sweetcorn, 800 calories, 49g fat per 380g pack. £3
When you're choosing a pre-prepared dish of this sort, heed these warning words: "mayonnaise" and "dressing" (okay, and "bacon", too). It might look like a salad, but it's not even pretending to be one, and the mayonnaise accounts for 21 per cent of what you are buying. If you're going to pack down 800 calories at lunchtime, there are healthier ways of doing it.
The healthy option: Noodles with green, Thai-style chicken, 265 calories and 2.2g fat per 240g pack. £3.
The noodles come garnished with coriander and a sweet Thai-style dressing and there is enough chicken to give the dish some substance. With the fresh coriander and the dressing (made from rice-vinegar, sugar and spices, so it's not one which you need to put to one side) it makes an interesting package, if rather light on the antioxidants that you would find in the vegetables that make up a more conventional salad.
CAFFE NERO
The baddie: Sundried Tomato Pasta Salad, 755 calories, 44g fat per 285g pack. £3
It looks deliciously authentic, but look at the figures. Take a decent serving of pasta, coat it in a generous slosh of olive-oil based dressing, flavour it with Parmesan cheese, pine nuts, feta cheese and black olives, and it's never going to be a low-calorie treat.
The healthy option: Tuscan bean salad with balsamic dressing, 226 calories; 14g of fat per 178g pack. £3
It looks like an insubstantial bowl of lettuce leaves, but there is a fair proportion of borlotti, cannellini and butter beans, with a touch of roasted pepper, tomato and parsley. The higher-than-you-might-expect fat content is thanks to the dressing, made with sunflower and olive oil; it's healthy, monounsaturated fat but nonetheless, since it comes in a separate pot, you could only use half of it, thereby reducing the calorie and fat content.
SAFEWAY
The baddie: Tomato and basil chicken salad, 330 calories, 17g of fat per 200g pack. £1.99.
Described as "succulent, marinated tomato and basil chicken on a bed of penne pasta in a rich tomato and basil mayonnaise dressing," this is a hefty little package which makes it look more like a snack than a meal. Few people would buy this alone, for lunch, which is why it's down as a "baddie" when the calorie content isn't apparently that high. You'd want more than one of them.
The healthy option: Tuna pasta, 210 calories, 3.5g fat per 220g pack. £2.09
It sounds a bit straight-forward, and frankly, it looks a bit boring. And, like the other Safeway salad, it's a very small package, but, as a snack, you're much better off with this one. There's a good proportion of tuna in among the pasta, and the creamy-looking dressing is made from fromage frais and yoghurt, keeping the fat content low. Not much in the way of vitamins and antioxidants, but it's a low-calorie, low-fat snack.
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