Now here's something non-salad-loving people would love to hear about. Fatty salad dressings like ranch or blue cheese may be doing a better job at unlocking the health benefits of vegetables than their low-fat counterparts.
Published in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, the small study explains that the science behind it isn't new. It's all about different nutrients working together.
Test subjects were fed three types of dressing with their salads - one with saturated fat, one with polyunsaturated fat, and one with monounsaturated fat. The winner emerged monounsaturated fat (canola oil):
Carotenoids, which include lycopene and beta-carotene, have been proven to help reduce the risk for heart disease and other chronic illnesses, so the more you get, the better. They found that subjects who had eaten the canola oil dressing had the highest levels of carotenoids in their bloodstream. Moreover, those who'd had dressings based on butter or vegetable oil needed more dressing to achieve the same benefits.
In the end it's all about balance. So if you're not desperately trying to cut calories, this research suggests that dressings made with canola oil may help unlock some of the benefits vegetables have to offer. And it tastes better too. [The Atlantic]
Photo by Alisha Vargas.
