My favorite salad dressing is Galeo's wasabi miso salad dressing, so good, creamy and low calorie. It is expensive so I don't use it all the time. I also like using salsa as a salad dressing. Lately, I've been buying nice vinegars and making my own salad dressing with a bit of vinegar, pepper and a little bit of a nice olive oil.
I make my own dressing from scratch. I use usually one tea spoon good quality oil (rapeseed, olive), black pepper, some salt, herbs and lemon juice from a freshly pressed lemon.
This is fine for most lettuce salads and tomato salads.
I have only found 2 dressings that I really LOVE and that are not bad for me. They are both from Kraft and you have to get the LIGHT versions, there are full fat versions that are much higher in calories:
Light Sicilian Roasted Garlic Balsamic Vinaigrette: 2 T = 35 calories, 1g fat, 0 sat. fat, 0 trans fat
Light Balsamic Vinaigrette: 2 T = 25 calories, 1g fat, 0 sat fat, 0 trans fat
I have found that I just dump these on my salad without even counting the calories and it doesn't make any difference at all in my weight loss...but I don't use a ton of it, just enough to flavor all areas of the salad after mixing around.
The only issue may be the sodium...you are best to make your own at home if that is an issue for you.
I use oil & vinegar, yes olive oil has calories but its a good fat and if you do not go overboard its not too bad. I also like oil & vinegar because its "thin" so a little goes a long way. Its SO easy to make your own. Take a cocktail shaker (or you can use a tupperware but I like the shaker since it strains it). Put in a clove of smashed garlic and a heaping tablespoon of dijon mustard. Add your vinegar of choice - red wine, cider, and rice vinegars make nice dressings, add some herbs if you want, add the oil and shake. I use a 3 to 1 ratio - so if I used 1/4 cup olive oil I'd use 3/4 cup vinegar. I like it more "vinegary". So say that makes a cup of dressing, it would have just over 400 calories - and since there is 16 tablespoons in a cup its only 25 calories a tablespoon.
i use to laod my salads also with full flavored hidden valley ranch dressing but never realized how much calories was in it till i started CC but now i am in love with the light creamy ceasar dressing from wishbone, it's only 35 calories for 2 tbsp!
I typically don't use dressing. Never much cared for it to begin with unless the salad I'm eating is no good. That usually only happens if I didn't make the salad myself. If I ever feel like one of my salads needs something extra to finish it off I'll add a little bit of olive oil.
If you want dressing I don't think it would hurt as long as you don't use too much of it.
