Sodium
Feta, blue cheese, creamy dressings
Draft · dietitian review pending
What actually happens
Two cheeses plus blue cheese dressing: 1,400–1,800 mg in one salad.
The fix
Drop the cheese, oil and lemon instead.
The numbers
- Sodium, one salad with two cheeses plus blue cheese dressing
- 1,400–1,800 mg
A salad is the safe choice. Everybody knows that. Which is exactly what makes this one sneaky.
Picture a big restaurant salad with crumbled feta, some blue cheese, and blue cheese dressing over the top. Two cheeses plus that dressing land somewhere around 1,400 to 1,800 mg of sodium. In one salad. The lettuce is mostly there for decoration.
Cheese is salty by design. Creamy dressings pile on more. Stack them together and the healthiest-looking thing on the menu turns into one of the saltiest.
My fix is simple. Drop the cheese. Swap the creamy dressing for olive oil and lemon. At home, when I want something creamy, I use my yogurt dressing instead.
Does the salad taste different? Sure. But taste adjusts when the salt comes down, and after a while the cheesy version starts to taste like a salt lick with croutons.