Salads are overrated af and aren’t real meals.
Mindless idiots everywhere have been brainwashed into eating glorified rabbit food under the premise that it’s “good for you”. If by “good for you” you mean “not filling in the least” then yes, salads are fucking great for you.
I’m not calling salads inherently unhealthy. Obviously the nutritional profile of a plate full of vegetables is healthier than that of a Big Mac or a Whopper. The problem is though, you’re not going to be properly satiated from eating a salad. Lettuce is mostly water, and pretty much all salad vegetables have very little calories. Did you really think you were going to be filled up by a plate of crunchy water and vegetables? Diet or not, your body still needs a certain amount of calories to function properly, and salads don’t provide enough calories to give you any real energy. Your body also needs dietary fat, something that salads don’t provide on their own.
Most people will compensate for this by piling all kinds of extra shit on, like dressing, croutons, meat, and cheese, turning their low calorie healthy option into an 800+ calorie monstrosity. For reference, a Big Mac has around 590 calories. Good job, you defeated the entire purpose of eating the salad.
Salads are okay as a side dish or an appetizer for real food, but as the main course all they do is leave you hungry. Impressionable idiots will gladly die on Salad Hill, spouting bullshit they don’t actually understand about micronutrients and vitamins. Sure, salads are loaded with vitamins. But what these calorie-deprived morons don’t realize is that you can get most of these vitamins from better sources while maintaining your diet and feeling satiated in the process. Do you even know what most of those vitamins actually do for your body? No, you don’t, because you’re just a parrot mindlessly repeating whatever your ill-informed friend or some social media influencer told you about vitamins. Chances are you’re probably overshooting anyway and pissing out most of the vitamins, especially if you’re also taking supplements.
I won’t sit here and pretend that I don’t enjoy a good salad. Put a chicken Caesar salad in front of me and I’ll destroy it. I’m also a big fan of Olive Garden’s salad (there’s a really good copycat recipe here). My issue is with salads being promoted as meal substitutes. Substituting an entire meal with a salad is a great way to fail your diet, because less than an hour after you finish it chances are you’ll be hungry again.
I don’t even know where I’m going with this article anymore, and to be honest I started writing this impulsively on a lunch break. I don’t really have a strong opinion on salads, they just don’t do shit for me. I don’t know how my CFO eats one every day for lunch. Maybe that’s why she’s always complaining that she’s tired by 3 PM. Try eating some actual food and maybe you’ll actually have energy.
I’m rereading this article, and it kind of sucks because there’s not a whole lot to it. Exactly like salad.
Alright, I’m done here. Time to go next door and bust someone’s metaphorical balls.