by Mike Geary – Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist
Author – The Truth About Six Pack Abs
If you want to eat truly healthy, support your fat loss goals,
and avoid some of the nasty additives in processed food, one thing you should eliminate is typical store-bought salad dressing.I personally NEVER buy pre-made salad dressings from the store anymore, and here’s why:
1. Almost all store-bought salad dressings contain fairly large amounts of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Unless you’re in a health food store, it’s almost impossible to find a salad dressing that doesn’t contain large amounts of HFCS.
2. Almost all store-bought salad dressings contain heavily refined soybean oil and/or refined canola oil… both of which are VERY unhealthy. Yes, that’s correct, canola oil IS unhealthy, despite the marketing propaganda you’ve been fed claiming that it’s healthy. You can read more about why canola oil is NOT healthy here.
Due to the refining process of both soybean or canola oils, the polyunsaturated component of the oils is oxidized and makes these oils very inflammatory inside your body. In addition, soybean oil is WAY too high in omega-6 fatty acids which throws your omega-6 to omega-3 balance out of whack.
We know that olive oil is healthier, but when it comes to store-bought dressings… Even salad dressings that claim to be “made with olive oil” on the FRONT label are deceptive, because if you read the ingredients on the BACK label, they are almost ALWAYS made of mostly refined soybean oil or canola oil as the main oil, with only a very small amount of actual olive oil as a secondary oil.
So here’s how to avoid all of these horrendously unhealthy store-bought salad dressings and make your own quick and easy SUPER-healthy dressing…
My Quick and Easy Recipe for Super-Healthy Salad Dressing
Geary’s Healthy-Fat Blend Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing
Fill your salad dressing container with these approximate ratios of liquids:
- 1/3rd of container filled with balsamic vinegar
- 1/3rd of container filled with apple cider vinegar
- fill the remaining 1/3rd of container with equal parts of extra virgin olive oil and “Udo’s Choice EFA Oil Blend”
- Add just a small touch (approx 1 or 2 teaspoons) of real maple syrup
- Add a little bit of onion powder, garlic powder, and black pepper and then shake the container to mix all ingredients well.
This homemade salad dressing mixture is delicious and healthy, and I pretty much never get tired of it!
The reason I choose to blend the extra virgin olive oil half & half with the Udo’s Choice Oil is that they make up for what each lacks… Although extra virgin olive oil is healthy and contains important antioxidants, it is mostly monounsaturated, and is low in the essential fatty acids (EFAs).
The Udo’s Choice Oil is higher in unrefined polyunsaturated oils with a good healthy balance of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids.
There are several variations of the Udo’s Choice Oil, and one of them (labeled DHA 3-6-9 Blend) even contains a DHA algae oil blended into the mix along with organic flax oil, coconut oil, evening primrose oil, rice bran oil, oat germ and bran oil, and a few others.
Overall, blending Udo’s Oil with extra virgin olive oil makes nearly a perfect oil blend for salad dressings with a great taste and maximum health benefits.
If you can’t find Udo’s Choice Oil Blends (you can find Udo’s at almost any health food store), there are other EFA oil blends on the market…just make sure that they are COLD-processed to protect the EFAs. You should never heat an EFA oil blend!
Give this homemade super-healthy salad dressing a try! You’ll do your body a favor by avoiding the harmful additives in store-bought salad dressings.
Enjoy!
Buyers Beware: High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Now Being Marketed As A Natural Sweetener.
Credit for Header: image by OpenClipart-Vectors salad dressing bottles containers on Pixabay
thank you for your advice
You're welcome Cenilda!
This is my first time visit at here and i am truly happy to read so many healthy, helpful tips. Thanks!
You're welcome Ruddie! Glad to have helped.
nice site you got here! very informative. highly recommended
Thanks Isabela!
Thanks for sharing such wonderful information…keep posting more such articles. I’ve been telling friends similar things about salad dressings!
Glad to have helped you prove to your friends you're not the only one with this opinion Cindy 🙂
We’re studying good blogs like yours. Many thanks for this post!
You're welcome Ian!
Thanks for this!
You're welcome Alda!
I think it is very important info for me personally. Your article content is excellent, to say the least Trish.
Thanks Cindy!