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Certain salad dressings can outweigh the salad itself in terms of sodium, fat, and sugar. With that in mind, putting salad dressing on your salad can turn your healthy meal into the opposite.
In fact, many salad dressings are high in inflammatory ingredients that can lower the nutritional value of your salad, adding unhealthy ingredients that you might not notice. According to Lisa Richards, nutritionist and author of The Candida Diet, the worst salad dressing you can use is Honey Mustard Dressing.
Honey Mustard Dressing is popular for its sweet and tangy mustard flavor, but it can pose a serious problem for your metabolism. Specifically, Honey Mustard Dressing's high fat and sugar content puts it at the top of the list of dressings to avoid.
Richards explains, "It contains 6 grams of sugar and nearly 15 grams of fat per serving."
Considering the average daily recommended amount of sugar and fat, these are huge numbers. According to MDhealth, the recommended daily sugar intake is 25 grams for men and 17 grams for women. For fat, MayoClinic suggests that your target range for total fat intake is 44 to 78 grams a day.
With that in mind, having just one serving of Honey Mustard Dressing can take up a large percentage of your daily recommended amount. Sugar and fat, when consumed in such large amounts, can seriously impede your weight loss goals.
Richards explains the problem of adding Honey Mustard Dressing to your salad, "This form of dressing ranks at the top of the most unhealthy due primarily to its sugar content." Because eating too much sugar can cause metabolic dysfunction, it's important to limit your sugar intake, which can be difficult when it sneaks into your diet through salad dressing.
Avoiding Honey Mustard Dressing and other sugar-filled dressings is important to keep your metabolism functioning properly. Although salads are full of insoluble fiber, which helps speed up your digestion, the addition of Honey Mustard Dressing could counter the health benefits of the salad itself.
Richards explains this problem: "Many salads are made with nutrient-dense ingredients and intentions to eat healthy, but are quickly discounted by adding unhealthy salad dressings with high amounts of fat, sodium, sugar, and other inflammatory ingredients."
To meet your weight loss goals and keep your metabolism running smoothly, she suggests avoiding dressings that are high in sugar, or sticking with homemade dressing recipes.
