How To Make Friends With Salad!

Salad | Naturopath Perth | Energy | Sleep | Nutrition

Easy Salad?  It Sure Can Be!

I often hear from clients and friends that they find salads boring or they can’t feel satisfied from eating “rabbit food”. If you consider a salad as eating iceberg lettuce mixed with half a tomato, grated carrot and a bit of cheese then of course this is not going to jump off the plate at you. A salad should compliment any meal or be fulfilling enough to be the main meal itself. I have been a salad lover since pre teen years and experimenting with different ingredients has led me to enjoying some of the tastiest bowls of “Rabbit food” I have ever consumed.

Here are my tips on how to make that salad go from boring to sexy!

Make It A Rainbow

Salads should be visually appealing with lots of different colours. The darker the colour, the higher the level of antioxidants. Colours you should always opt for are dark green, purple, red and blue. If you enjoy a sweeter salad add a piece of fresh handful of chopped fruit or berries. Apples and pears team up nicely with rocket while blueberries and raspberries are a great addition to baby spinach based salads. The addition of fruit in a salad will satisfy any sweet tooth.

Texture Means Taste

Experiment with your salads by combining rough and soft textures. Add a mixture of raw baby spinach, raw broccoli, sprouts or beans with softly steamed pumpkin. Add raw seeds to the salads such as a handful of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds or linseeds. Bitter leafy green vegetables such as spinach, broccoli and brussel sprouts stimulate liver clearance and being raw means all nutrients are still bio available and not lost through cooking methods. Before you cringe at the thought of Brussels sprouts mix a couple of raw Brussels with ¼ raw cabbage in the next salad you make and you will not even notice they are there! Seeds are small superfood powerhouses packed with vitamins, minerals, good fats and proteins. The combination of soft and crunchy textures will make each bite interesting and leave your mouth watering for more!

Get Nutty!

Ever wondered why you get that overwhelming feeling of fullness or feel sick if you eat something rich and creamy? Well it’s due to the fact that fats fill us up very effectively. Unlike when we consume sugar, our body recognises fat in different foods and will let us know when we have eaten enough of it. Raw nuts are high in good fats especially Walnuts, therefore adding these to your salads will help you feel satisfied not to mention consuming the added benefits from nuts such as vitamins, minerals and proteins.

DIY Salad Dressing

Have you ever thought about how long that salad dressing was sitting on the supermarket shelf before you bought it? Well that dressing had an extended shelf life due to all the added preservatives and sugars. These put an extra load on our livers and are not very kind on our digestive system. To avoid this liver burden and improve the taste of your luscious leafy greens mix ½ a freshly squeezed lemon, lime or orange with 1 tablespoon of olive or flaxseed oil, Himalayan pink salt and black pepper. The freshly squeezed juice will add vitamin C to your salad which improves iron absorption while the oil increases your Omega 3 intake.

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