Salad savvy

Here’s a research tidbit you can use: Researchers had 42 women eat as much pasta as they wanted for lunch, with or without a salad first. If the women ate a salad with only veggies and low-cal dressing, they ate 12% fewer calories overall than eating the pasta alone. No big surprise.

Here’s the surprise: If they first ate a calorie-dense salad (with regular dressing and cheese), then they ended up eating many more calories than if they ate only pasta!

Moral of the story: Either stick with low-cal salad ingredients or don’t bother eating salads at all!

Try flavoring your salads with salsa, fresh fruit, a variety of veggies and vinegars and you’ll have plenty of flavor.