Food Land Mines – Trader Joe’s Salad

Vegan does not mean healthy. You can be a vegan and still have a diet that is detrimental to your health. While words like vegan, high protein, and GMO are starting to become sexier words, it is important that we still take the time and understand what we are putting into our bodies, vegan or not. That’s why I’ve created Food Land Mines, products that you think are safe but really are just crap disguised as health food.

Today on Food Land Mines, we bring you Trader Joe’s Prepared Salads (Dressings).

Man… Damn you TJ’s… but it’s not just them, you have to be extra careful around pre-made salads, specifically the dressing.

Now I must admit, embarrassingly, I let my guard down and didn’t read the ingredients before I made my purchase. The salad itself is fine (even with the non organic soy, it’s a solid alternative to a lot of other crap) but once I got to the dressing I realized I had found a healthy eating landmine.

MAYONNAISE? Come on. So the first two ingredients in the dressing are canola oil and mayonnaise. The first ingredient in mayonnaise? Canola oil and canola oil is garbage. Look at what the dressing does to the salad:

36 g’s of fat. A salad that should have 220 good plant based calories now has 560 calories and 120 from fat!  And another favorite of mine the “Super Crunch Salad” is no better.

 

33 grams of fat, that is the same as a Big Mac. Think about that and the 510 calories puts it only 30 calories short of the Mac.

There is hope here though, the salads themselves are solid but the dressing is the poison, if only there was an easy solution.

For 4 bucks I keep a bottle of balsamic vinegar handy and that and a squeeze of lemon and hot sauce is a damn good salad dressing. Sometimes I even get crazy and mix balsamic and spicy mustard but that’s only if I’m looking to get wild.

Remember to read the ingredients! Learn to spot where you can still be poisoning your body even when you have the best of intentions.

I’m JD and I’ll let myself out.
Go checkout my other stuff!

Food Land Mines – Lenny & Larry’s Complete Cookie

Spanish for Vegans

Let’s start your journey to controlling your health through nutrition!