Make Your Own Salad Dressing

Please. The ones in the store are mostly soybean oil. You can do a lot better than this.

You should eat salads with a little oil to make sure you absorb all the vitamins from the greens. And a little acid helps you absorb all the minerals! There's a reason that salads have traditionally been eaten with oil and vinegar - your great great great grandmother knew best.

Salad dressing is an opportunity to get some good oils. Olive oil and nut oils are all excellent choices. Make sure you get cold pressed oils and extra virgin olive oil. Our favorite relatively inexpensive brand is actually Whole Foods store brand. You can add cold pressed flaxseed oil or walnut oil to get some Omega 3 fatty acids. Mix the oil with vinegar or lemon juice and add some seasonings. A teaspoon of lecithin will help it stay mixed and is actually good for you.

Here's my favorite recipe:

Mary's Omega 3 Italian Dressing

1/2 cup olive oil
3 T flaxseed oil
1/4 cup vinegar or juice of one lemon (I like to mix this 1/2 and 1/2)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp of oregano, dried
1/2 tsp of basil, dried

A tablespoon of this is about 90 calories.

Another alternative is to use lemon juice and feta cheese - Greek style. Crumble an ounce of feta on your salad and sqeeze on the juice of 1/2 a lemon. This adds about 75 calories and adds some calcium. It also adds 4g of saturated fat vs. 2.25 in the recipe above.