Did you know that your body has a very difficult time absorbing the nutrients from vegetables unless it is served with fat? So if you have a salad with zero-calorie dressing (whatever that is, bleh!), you won't be receiving those nutrients. Better to have some good healthy fats with that, like olive oil. You'll enjoy your salad more, you'll get the nutrients you need and you'll probably stick to eating more salads in the long term. People can't live on diet food forever, not people like me anyway - if I don't enjoy my food I'm definitely going to binge. I try to be careful with how much oil I put in because I don't like my salad over dressed but I NEVER omit healthy fats. I'm not concerned about fats anyway.

You've gotten good ideas about dressings here. I like to mix olive oil with vinegar, and I have several types of vinegar on hand to switch things up. I also like to crush an anchovy into my dressing - it doesn't make it taste fishy, just adds flavor and saltiness :) I put honey and mustard in my dressings too, why not? Honey is good stuff! Sometimes if I'm having a spinach salad I like to mix in a half tbsp of strawberry jam into my vinegraitte yum!

Ketchup - it's sickly sweet for me, I can't handle that much sweetness, and I can't handle BBQ sauces either for the same reason. As a dip I like to make tzatziki.

For flavored coffees, is there something you can add to the coffee grounds themselves? Sometimes I put real cinnamon in my grounds and it gives a nice aroma to the coffee. I wouldn't use the flavored syrupy creamers personally but only because they've got sugar or fake sugar in them.

Ditto - I never measure mustard or hot sauce, but I do measure dressing, mayo, etc.

hhm6 I also have reflux, mine due to a hiatal hernia.
My gastoenterologist advised me to stay away from "COOKED TOMATOES"
he said uncooked was fine.

That is your opinion that avocados are not a condiment. Guess what? We can actually change anything to be a condiment if we'd like as long it is used to enchance or add substance to your food as per online definition. Mashed avocado has more or less the same nutritonal value as mayonnaise and yet it's not a condiment? Please. Also, it does not matter the calories, fat, etc it to be a condiment, it can be either high/low calorie and/or fat. Who are you to say otherwise, really?

Lastly, where did I ever say cottage cheese was a condiment? I was giving ideas for salad dressings.

I think you need to tone down the opinionated-ness of your posts. It's coming off as you're all wrong and I'm right. Not cool.

Actually, avocado has less calories and fat than mayonnaise per serving, and it is loaded with nutrients. So its nutritional value by far exceeds mayonnaise :carrot:

Even better! :)

I eat a few avocados per week. They are sooo good for you. It really jazzes up my salads and wraps.

I can't seem to find graciouspantry.com... Google Chrome says no such animal :(
Is the address correct?? It sounds interesting and I'd like a look.
Liana

Personally I’d only agree with friend if you were one of those people who pour on GLOBS of high-calorie sauces. Doesn't sound like it to me! Maybe its because I don’t place too much importance in my sauces, but as long as they taste decent, I just use the low-cal ones and mix them in with the higher cal ones, so I don’t have to rely on larger quantities of the higher cal sauces. Situations like replacing a whole meal with some bran crackers and 0 cal sauces would be upsetting for me, while others might feel differently about their sauces. I do think that its an individual thing, but maybe just mixing up high and low cal sauces might be a good idea.

Yeah, but the problem is I can eat a whole avocado in one sitting easy, while I don't even like mayo thinly spread on a sandwich. :o To me avocado is actually a food, one I could eat spoons of, while condiments - not so much.
Liana

I feel like I should preface everything I say with "I'M MAINTAINING AND UNDER 30 AND MY TDEE IS 2200" but I am pretty relaxed with condiments and I think most people can "afford" to be less strict with them unless we're talking pure oil or bleu cheese creamy dressing or very large avocados. I also always advocate for dipping the fork instead of pouring the dressing on - much easier to add than to subtract!

I haven't dabbled in condiments for the past 3 weeks. I miss my mayo...hah. But I'm just not much of a mustard person. My top favorite sauces are probably Chic-filet sauce (drool) and horseradish sauce.

Avocado on toast is fantastic though. And much healthier.

Condiments are huge. I agree with the posts to use full fat dressings never low fat ones.

Two main reasons. The fat will help you absorb all the awesome nutrients in the veggies. Second the fat will satiate you a lot. Third one of course the carbs replacing the fats in low fat versions will just wreak havoc with weight loss attempts.

I love using mustard now. Lots of good turmeric. ALWAYS read ketchup bottles. Get organic if you can. Much richer and tastier than other types and better. But at least get one without HFCS.

And try to always have ketchup on the side so you can dip stuff in and control portions.

In terms of wraps, I've been spreading a thin layer of either hummus or baba ghanouj on my wrap, then spread 1/4th of an avocado, then add my veggies.

And for ketchup, you can buy no sugar added ketchup. I don't really use ketchup except on veggie burgers during the summer.

But to others it can serve as a condiment. Personally I think a condiment is anything that adds moisture or a sauce like quality. Even if you were to eat a whole large avocado that's like 350cal, I'd rather spend the calories on that instead of croutons.