Salad

Salad is the stuff of nightmares for anyone who is thinking of going on a diet, the dreaded rabbit food. But I have grown to love salad and sometimes I will have it for lunch and with dinner and this is because the key to enjoying salad is what you have with it.

The first salad choice you have is: preprepared or make your own? The first consideration is price as a preprepared salad is going to cost you about the same as a whole weeks worth of DIY salad if you're really unlucky! Also if you make your own it can become quite time consuming as you need to calculate the calorie values of each individual ingredient by weight, granted you could use the "Recipes" function on MyFitnessPal but that still seems like too much hard work to me when I can just scan the barcode of a ready made salad.

I personally prefer the preprepared option as they are always clearly marked with nutritional information which will include the little sachet of salad dressing, olives, feta cheese or sun dried tomatoes that comes with it. Any of the kind that come with pasta that is drenched in sauce needs particular caution as they are going to have considerably more calories than a more traditional side salad or leaf salad.

Some of my suggestions for preprepared salads are:

• Sainsbury's Sweet & Crispy Salad Bowl 274 calories per pack. This one is quite high in calories as it comes with a sachet of mayonnaise.

• Sainsbury's Greek Salad Bowl 174 calories a pack. This is one of my favourite salads as it comes with a little pot of feta cheese and olives.

• Sainsbury's Tomato & Mozzarella Salad Bowl 164 calories a pack. Again this is a solid favourite of mine and it comes with a little pot of sun dried tomatoes and mozzarella balls.

• Tesco Simple Side Salad 32 calories a pack. This is one of my choices for lunch time salad at work.

• Tesco Crunchy Salad Bowl 62 calories a pack. Again this is a mainstay of my office based lunches,

I also use Marks and Spencer for salads, they have a very good product line where you can buy three little packs of salad ingredients so that you can build your own salad, they also have some very nice and low calorie preprepared salad in their "Count On Us" low calorie range.Unfortunately the Marks and Spencer website is poor when it comes to food as it's not geared towards online sales and because of this it's set out more like a hard copy magazine so I'm sorry to say that I'm going to have to list products with calories counts but with no hyperlink to the product:

• Layered Prawn Salad, small tub: 185 calories.

• Ham and Egg Salad with Salad Cream Dressing: 145 calories per pack 

• Beetroot and Red Onion Salad: 49 calories per 125g pack, this is a fantastic addition to any salad if you like beetroot and red onion.

• Count On Us British Chicken and Basil Pasta Salad: 360 calories for a 325g container, but this is a rare beast in that it's low in calories for a "pasta and awash with sauce" salad.

Next up is the Co-Op, which like the Marks and Spencer's website is not geared towards online sales so it's another boring list I'm sorry to say. What I like about the Co-Op is that they do individual servings of salad, I only get a couple of items from them and in all honesty not very often:

• Greek Salad: one pack 185 calories.

• Sweet and Crunchy Salad: 40 calories per 120g.

I think that it's quite important to identify low calories additions for salad especially to bulk up the very low calorie salads as otherwise they amount to little more than a snack, the following are my most used options:

• John West Weight Watchers Tuna Mayonnaise & Sweetcorn 77 calories per 80g tin

• John West Weight Watchers Tuna in Herb & Tomato Dressing 80 calories per 80g tin

• Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Jumbo King Prawns 118 calories per 175g pack 

• Tesco Chunky Flame Grilled Chicken Snack Pack 107 calories per 100g pack

• Tesco Healthy Living Salad Cream 20 calories per 15ml (tablespoon)

• Tesco Low Fat French Salad Dressing 20 calories per 15ml (tablespoon)

• Tesco Healthy Living Mayonnaise 14 calories per 15ml (tablespoon)

• Tesco Healthy Living Coleslaw 64 calories per 50g (heaped table spoon) 

• Tesco Healthy Living Potato Salad 55 calories per 50g (heaped table spoon)

• Tesco Healthy Living Hummus Three Pot Stacker 165 calories per 70g pot

• Hellmann's Fat Free Vinaigrette 7 calories per 15ml (tablespoon)

• Sainsbury's Be Good To Yourself Salad Cream 24 calories per 15ml (tablespoon)

• Sainsbury's Be Good To Yourself Mayonnaise  13 calories per 15ml (tablespoon)

• Sainsbury's Be Good To Yourself Thousand Island Dressing  13 calories per 15ml (tablespoon)

• Sainsbury's Be Good To Yourself Sweet Balsamic Dressing  9 calories per 15ml (tablespoon)

So as you can see there are many options open to you when having salad and it needn't be a boring meal, in fact a salad can be surprisingly enjoyable if you put your mind to it!