How To Build A Healthy Salad (That Still Tastes Good)

I love a good salad.  However, I have a strict set of demands when it comes to building a salad.  Vegetarian or not, a salad can be a wholesome meal packed with nutrients, color, protein, and fiber. But salad is SO CONFUSING!  I totally get that.  One of the biggest questions I get is how to keep a salad healthy while still being filling AND delicious. So today, you are going to learn how to build a healthy salad that still tastes good … Tara Style 🤣.

Tara’s Tuesday Tips:

How To Build A Healthy Salad

(That Still Tastes Good)

Most people drown their beautiful bowl of greens in dressings + toppings thinking they are making their salad healthy but in reality they are not! If you follow me on Instagram (@myvegetarianfamily 💚) or know Mr. MVF, you know that Mondays are called Salad Mondays in the MVF house.  Yep, every Monday.  Did I tell you I love salad? Hands down, my favorite night of the week.  I LOVE creating beautiful salad masterpieces for us to enjoy.  My salads are not wilted lettuce drowned in jarred mayonnaise.  My salads are certainly not a calorie trap.  It’s an easy formula, and I will show you how!

Start With A Bed Of Greens

In one of my other Tuesday Tips articles, Why You Should Be Eating Green, I explain the importance of eating LOTS of greens.  It is extremely tempting to reach for iceberg lettuce but try choosing a darker version instead.  The greener the better.  Lettuce is super low in calories + very high in fiber – a total win. My favorites are baby spinach, arugula, and if you can find a mixture that is even better! 

*First in the bowl: 2-3 cups of the greenest leafy greens you can find*

Veggie Options Are Endless

I could list out all the veggies you could put on your salad BUT I will spare you the boring read.  My tip for choosing veggies is to stick with a theme.  Going Thai style? stick with grated carrots and shredded red cabbage.  Italian? try cherry tomatoes + bell peppers. Mediterranean? cucumbers + parsley +red onions work best.  Seriously, this is where people go wrong with salads.  Don’t just dump everything in + call it a meal.  Be strategic about it.

*Next in the bowl: veggies. Be mindful of veggie choices + stick to a theme*

Go With Grains

Yes, you heard me correctly.  Grains IN the salad. You don’t want to be hungry in an hour, do you? That bag of chips can wait because when you learn how to build a healthy salad that still tastes you should add a grain.  When I figured out this trick, it was a total game changer around here.  My favorite is quinoa but couscous, brown rice, barley, bulgar wheat, farro, even pasta all work well in a salad bowl. Have you ever toasted quinoa? Try it on a salad! How To Toast Quinoa.

*Third in the bowl: 1/2-1 cup of grains, you won’t be sorry*

Ditch The Junk Protein

Bacon bits, sliced deli meats, full fat cheeses, meats in shiny packages, you get the point.  These things are loaded with sodium, carcinogens, fats, and calories.  Want to know why you aren’t losing weight but are eating lots of salads? Junk protein (oh and your dressing, will get to that later).

Try tofu, nuts, seeds, chickpeas, tempeh black beans, cannellini beans, soy beans (edamame).  If you choose faux meat, check the labels.  Be cautious of soy protein isolate, high sodium + high fat meat alternatives. Read the labels!

My favorite proteins for a salad are Air Fryer Buffalo ChickPeas or Crispy No Oil Air Fryer Tofu or Air Fryer Tempeh on my salad.

*Fourth in the bowl: 1 cup CLEAN protein (beans, tofu, seeds, nuts, tempeh)*

Dress It Up

In a perfect world with the perfect salad, we would all be sitting around eating giant bowls of greens that taste good without any dressing.  Ummmm, wake up and gross.  Raw veggies without dressing? Not this girl.

We all like a little (or a lot) of dressing. Like all foods, picking the right one can be challenging.  Bottled dressings are typically made with lots of unhealthy oils, sour cream, buttermilk, or mayonnaise.  These are extremely calorie dense foods giving you no vitamins, no fiber, and LOTS of saturated fat + calories.  Again, this is why you aren’t losing weight while eating salads.

I’m not a huge fan of the all or nothing approach to health + weight loss/maintenance BUT bottled or store-bought salad dressings should be a never food.  NEVER. So many things in those bottles that your body did not ask for.

If you are really serious about learning How To Build A Healthy Salad (That Still Tastes Good) and keeps you full, and doesn’t make you gain weight … make your own dressing! Alternatively, you could top your salad with hummus, I LOVE my salad with hummus as a dressing. Need a recipe? Try this one: Kalamata Olive Hummus.

OR Start here for ALL of my dressing recipes: Tara’s Favorite Salad Recipes!

*On top of the bowl: healthy + homemade salad dressing*

A Few Other Salad Tips To Keep In Mind

• Add fruit if sweet salads are your thing
  • This increases the fiber and nutrient content but be careful of dried fruits that have lots of sugar and little nutrients.
• Stick to a theme
  • Don’t mix + match.  This is why people hate salads.  It it’s a Mexican salad, toss in come corn + black beans, not shredded cabbage.  Save that for a Thai salad.  Get it?
• Make a BIG salad
  • Be careful of calorie density (Read this: Calorie Density 101).  In summary, load your bowl with lots of low-calorie-density foods (spinach, lettuce, cucumbers) and a few high-calorie-density foods (nuts, avocado).
• Make salads fun again
  • If you like the salads you make, you will keep making them, and keep eating them. Salad does not NEED to be disgusting. Fun + flavorful + filling, keep that in mind when building your salad bowl.

Reasons You Are Gaining Weight With Salads

• too much sugar in your dressings, yes I said sugar
• high-calorie-density toppings (dried fruit, croutons, bacon bits, breaded/fried goodies on top)
• using dressings made mostly of oil (or other saturated fats)
• you exclusively use bottled dressings (make your own!)
• your salad is too small (then you are reaching for chips after eating your salad, sabotaged yourself)
• too much protein (you don’t actually need that much protein!)
• your salad is in a tortilla bowl (spoiler alert: tortilla bowls are refined grains deep fried in oil!)
• fat-free dressings top your salad (these are very processed + high in sodium, sugar, chemicals)
• you are overdoing the healthy fats (remember calories count! 1/2 cup walnuts are 400 calories!)

My Favorite Homemade Salad Dressings:

All of my homemade salad dressings have a base of  nuts, tahini, beans, or avocado.

Get creative and make your salad into a fiber-filled meal using real, whole foods.

Click on the name of the dressing to get right to the recipe  Enjoy!

1. Lemon Tahini
2. Creamy Italian
3. Silken Tofu Vegan Ranch (nut-free!)
4. Oil-Free Vinaigrette
5. (No) Honey Mustard
6. Vegan Ranch
7. Creamy Avocado
8. Thai Peanut Sauce
9. Chipotle Ranch
10. Silken Tofu Vegan Spicy Ranch
11. Oil-Free Salad Dressings

Need more help with understanding a plant-based diet? Start here with my article understanding what WFPB is or here to understand other ways to lower your cholesterol. 

Stay healthy, my friends 

Tara

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