Salad Dressing: Tossing In Health and Wellness Goals
Hi Byte Wellness Fam!
Back again with more ways to make our everyday habits acts of Self-Love. The tragedies of this last week have shaken so many of us. Add them to the ever-expanding list of reasons why we need to fiercely protect our well-being in every way possible.
That’s what we do here- we figure out how to build systems into our everyday existence that build us up more than they tear us down. Our wellness habits are the foundation for those systems.
This month, in our Daily Wellness Text Thread and #ByteWellnessWednesday workshops we looked at our salad dressing choices and how it fits into those wellness systems.
We answered some fundamental questions:
How do you know if a salad dressing is “healthy”?
Which store-bough salad dressings are the most nutritious based on their fat profile?
This week, we talked about how our salad dressing choices might shift based on our wellness goals and health risks.
***Join our private community to get in on the conversation.***
What’s Healthy About Salad Dressing?
In order to understand how a salad dressing can affect our health, we have to understand, well, salad dressing.
The base of a salad dressing is generally made from 3 ingredients: a fat and an acid and some extra flavors.
Fat:
Plant oil or animal fat. We’ve talked about how plant oils generally have a higher-quality fat profile with much more unsaturated fat than animal fats have.
Acid:
Vinegar or citrus juice lend acidity to the salad dressing. These may carry polyphenols that positively affect our sugar metabolism.
Extra Flavors:
Salt, sugar, spices and other flavors are usually added to salad dressing.
The components that can have the biggest positive or negative effects on our health are Fat and Extra Flavors.
Here are some salad dressing realities to keep in mind based on our health risks and wellness goals.
High Cholesterol, Coronary Artery Disease, History of Stroke:
Look for Omega 3 Unsaturated Fat
We’ve talked a lot about saturated fat in the past. It’s the main type fat found in animal products. It has a pretty bad health reputation. But, you know by now that health and wellbeing rely on balance.
Instead of focusing on cutting out nutrients that can be harmful in excess (like saturated fat), let’s make sure we’re getting enough of the nutrients that build us up (like Omega 3 polyunsaturated fats).
What are Omega 3s?
Omega 3s are a type of polyunsaturated fat. They’re one of the “essential” fats because we need them but can’t make them. So, it’s important to get enough Omega 3s from food.
Omega 3s are considered heart-healthy because they help lower bad cholesterol and help to prevent blood vessel blockages.
How Much Do We Need:
The USDA estimates average intake for healthy women who aren’t pregnant or lactating is 1.1g daily. It's unclear exactly how much individuals need to combat health risks like high cholesterol or heart and blood vessel disease. But, studies suggest that eating much higher doses of omega 3s (2-4 grams of DHA and/or EPA daily) can reduce very high levels of a certain type of bad cholesterol (triglycerides).
How Do I Know If My Dressing Has Omega 3s:
Nutrition facts don’t show what type of polyunsaturated fat is in our food. Sometimes, they don’t even list unsaturated fat at all.
Here’s where the ingredients list comes in. See which type of fat is in your dressing. Then, use this USDA database to check whether the fat used in your dressing is Omega 3-heavy. Find lots of omega 3s in dressings with a base of canola oil, soybean oil or flaxseed oil.
Next week, we’ll look at how the make-up of salad dressing might affect wellness goals like weight loss and health risks like high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, liver failure, type 2 diabetes.
Last, but not least…don’t forget to answer our discussion questions.
Discussion Question
Discussion question:
What is your version of taking care of yourself? How do you think you are doing with that?
Really important to be honest with ourselves about what self-care looks like and whether we’re really up to the challenge of choosing to invest in our wellness even under duress. Also important to explore how our definitions of self-care have changed throughout our lives. As our idea of self evolves, why shouldn’t our idea of self-care evolve along with it?
Let me know you answer!
Happy Healthy Living,
Dr. Wuse