🥗 Salad

A salad is a cold dish of raw or cooked vegetables, greens, fruit, cheese, meat, fish or eggs, usually served with a dressing. The American Heritage Dictionary traces the word through Old French to Vulgar Latin: salata, “salted”, from Latin sal, “salt”. Salt is still central to dressings.

Olive oil is the classic base for dressings. A vinaigrette takes one part vinegar to three parts oil: for example, 2 tablespoons of wine vinegar, 6 tablespoons of oil, a little mustard, salt and pepper, shaken in a jar. For salads where the taste of the oil comes through, choose extra virgin. In a Greek salad the oil goes with tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, Kalamata olives, oregano and feta.

The fat in a dressing is there not only for flavour. In a 2004 study, participants ate the same salad of spinach, lettuce, cherry tomatoes and carrots with a dressing containing no fat, 6 g or 28 g of oil. Without fat, carotenoids (alpha- and beta-carotene and lycopene) barely reached the blood, and with the largest portion of oil the most was absorbed. A 2012 study showed that the amount of fat matters more than its type.

The WHO advises everyone over 10 years of age to eat at least 400 g of vegetables and fruit a day, and salad helps get closer to that.

Why it matters to you. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advises washing produce under running water before preparing it; soap, detergents and commercial produce washes are not recommended. Buy cut, packaged salad only if it has been kept chilled, and store greens in a clean fridge at 4 °C or below. Remember that olives and feta are already salty, so add salt with care.