What's in Your Salad?

By Andy Bergmann
Former Director, Design & Data

Amy Keating, Consumer Reports Test Program Leader, Food, Heath.

By Amy Keating
Test Program Leader

July 28, 2021

Salads can make a super-healthy meal, providing fiber and a variety of nutrient-packed vegetables. But it’s tempting to load up your bowl with ingredients that add a lot of sodium and saturated fat (We’re looking at you, blue cheese). Before you make an actual salad, use our simple tool to see how your choices affect the nutrition.

START OVER

1/3 DAILY VALUE

CALORIES

SAT. FAT

CARBS

FIBER

PROTEIN

SODIUM

Ideally, a meal-sized salad should have one-third or more of the Daily Value for fiber and no more than one-third of the Daily Value for saturated fat and sodium.

Nutrient values for individual salad ingredients are estimates derived from ESHA The Food Processor, a nutritional analysis database.

More on Salad

• The Safest Ways to Eat Salad
• Healthy Salad Dressing Recipes
• CR Salad Dressing Ratings

Andy Bergmann

Andy was the director of design and data at CR. His data-driven design work has been featured on CNN, FastCo, Washington Post, NPR, NBA, and Sports Illustrated. He was formerly an executive creative director at CNN and is the author of "The Starry Giraffe" (Simon & Schuster). Follow him on X: @dubly

Amy Keating

I am a registered dietitian and have been evaluating food products and providing nutrition advice at Consumer Reports for over a decade. I'm passionate about getting my kids to eat healthfully, and I love growing, cooking, and even composting food!