By Nancy Mehlert, MS
Unfortunately, virtually every salad dressing on a salad bar, on a menu, and on the salad dressing aisle of the grocery store, is a nightmare when it comes to ingredients. Damaged oils, specifically soybean, canola and olive oil, and others that are not listed but present, are commonly used by most large producers. None of these can provide nourishment for your cellular make up, and what they do instead is create inflammation and toxicity.
The second issue is that many of the other ingredients are genetically modified, chemicals and/or highly allergenic such as, corn starch, gluten, yeast extract, mono-sodium glutamate (MSG), natamycin (mold inhibitor), Polysorbate 60, Calcium Disodium EDTA, and high fructose corn sugar. These too create inflammation, are toxic to the body, and in some cases are damaging to the gut.
On your journey to improved health, you may be choosing to eat more salads, yet your salad dressing choices may be contributing to poor health. Thankfully, there is hope on the horizon as a couple of companies have come out with some cleaner dressings that taste good!
Here are two company brands you might want to look for and give a try.
Primal Kitchen Salad Dressings and Mayonnaise – This brand used avocado oil and is certified gluten free and certified non-GMO. Great start. Additionally, they do NOT use dairy, gluten, soy, refined sugar or grains in their dressings. These are available at HEB, Whole Foods, Target, Kroger, Walmart, Amazon.com and ThriveMarket.com.
Tessemae’s Salad Dressings – Always organic and Non-GMO, this company offers a wide range of good choices. This will be in a refrigerated section, usually in produce. Many non-dairy options are available, and they use undamaged oils. Available at Whole Foods, HEB, Target, ThriveMarket.com, Amazon.com.
Now, go and enjoy a fresh salad!