No fat salad dressing may not be the best thing for absorption of vitamins and nutrients. An article here talks about how fat helps in the absorption of a variety of nutrients. It points out that people who eat salads with fat-free dressings absorb far less of the nutrients from the salad.
That’s why they make cheese and sunflower seeds 
and they all post on message boards 
What? Where are there diet experts posting on message boards?
it is healthy because it gets you to eat your greens.
Bull. Eating 1200 calories a day of fat laced Little Lardies Snack Cakes is not better for you than eating 1500 calories worth of fresh fruits and vegetables. Not all calories are equal.
How is the dressing in the OP low fat? 87.5% of all the calories come from fat.
Amazing what a little research can dig up:
And here is a more informative take on the concept:
So, about those equal and opposite experts…
Because it has less fat than regular versions of ranch dressing. I don’t know why you think the percentage of calories from fat is relevant.
Not really relevant. This thread isn’t about weight loss per se, it’s about “healthiness” of foods. pkbites was pointing out that fatty junk food is not better for you on average than fruits and vegetables.
Sure, you can lose weight while eating lots of junk food (as long as you manage to consume less total calories than you burn), but that doesn’t mean you’re eating healthily. An effective diet in terms of weight loss and a healthy diet in terms of nutrition are not automatically the same thing.
You’re cites are suspect as they mostly revolve around one schmuck. Metabolisms vary from one to another. My wife stops short of putting butter in her coffee yet her cholesterol/triglyceride is below the level considered excellent.
Up until I was 35 I could eat 8000 calories of deep fried lard biscuits and lose weight.
And I’m not kidding. I desperately tried to gain weight in high school to get out of a more difficult wrestling weight class. Losing weight was costing me muscle mass but I couldn’t gain weight to save my tush. I was shoving Randys Big Dandy burgers and greasy Little Red Hen chicken down my throat and actually lost weight. I even skipped work outs and lost weight.
And if someone were arguing that it’s better to eat fatty junk food than fruits and veggies then you might have a point. No one’s made that claim, though so I dunno why y’all are snapping at each other.
Thank you.
That’s fine, but I don’t see this product being advertised as “healthy,” as you characterize it. It’s a freaking salad dressing–do you expect it be loaded with multivitamins and fiber and crap? No. For a salad dressing, it is, indeed, relatively healthful. Salad dressing is just oil, vinegar, and spices, for the most part. A standard vinaigrette is 3:1 oil:vinegar, which would put it at about 180 calories for a 2 tbsp serving, with almost 100% of the calories coming from the oil. This product, for a salad dressing, is what I would characterize as “light.” There is nothing wrong with fat in your diet, and I, personally, would like to balance the carbs in my salad with a bit of fat for satiety, rather than eating a completely low-cal salad dressing made with non-fat yogurt or something of that nature. A bit of fat is good.
The statement, and I quote (again), was “Not all calories are equal.” which is just as scientifically illiterate as saying “Not all grams are equal.”
I fully agree with this.
Foods are not healthy or unhealthy: an overall diet is healthy or unhealthy. A moderate amount of low-fat ranch on a salad for dinner is quite healthy: the same ranch poured on top of pizza is just meaningless extra calories.
Pkbites, instead of thinking of it as % of calories from fat, think of it as calories/gram. The calories/gram of the light dressing is significantly lower. Or, to put it another way, olive oil is pure fat. That doesn’t make it unhealthy. It’s an ingredient, not a meal. Salad dressing is an ingredient.
No but it insinuates it.
It is what it is, a reduced calorie and fat product. Since pretty much all salad dressings have twice as many calories and they all get their calories from fat, this is a healthier alternative.
Food, by itself isn’t healthy. Your diet is healthy or not. This is one ingredient that can help you create a healthier diet. If you are going to concentrate on the fact that it contains fat and has calories you’re missing the point. There’s nothing wrong with putting oil on a salad, it can easily be part of a well balanced diet.
How does one calculate calories and/or fat from a homemade vinaigrette dressing such as 3 tbs of evoo, 2 tbs red wine vinegar, 1 tsp lemon juice, 1 tsp dijon, and one pressed garlic clove?
You can look up the nutritional info of all the ingredients, add it up, and then divide by the number of servings that the recipe makes if necessary. For instance, lemon juice.
Of course, you’d need to know what ‘evoo’ is. Which I do not.
“EVOO” is extra virgin olive oil. I think it’s been popularized by cooking shows.
And even diets aren’t necessarily health or unhealthy: It’s lifestyles as a whole that matter. The typical Olympic athlete eats more than any of us folks, and yet remains healthy, because they’re getting a ton more exercise and burning all those extra Calories.