How Your Salad Could Be Poisoning You

How to identify toxic salad dressings

Let’s get right to the point! The majority of salad dressings out there today will do more harm to you compared to any benefits you’ll get from eating the leafy greens.

Look at the ingredients list on the salad dressing bottle. If the manufacturer is using any oils other than olive oil, avocado oil, or coconut oil, then you’d be better off not even touching it.

Start reading the ingredient labels on your salad dressings and stay away from any products that are using vegetable oil, canola oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, or rice bran oil.

Here is a common list of ingredients for a Ranch salad dressing…

The very first ingredient listed is vegetable oil, also very closely associated with soybean oil and canola oil.

Be on the lookout for misleading advertisements. I recently came across a mayonnaise in the store that states on the front label, “Mayo with Olive Oil”. After looking on the ingredients label I found out that olive oil was one of the ingredients, along with canola oil and soybean oil.

After taking a closer look at the ingredients, this is what I found.

 

Now that you know what to look out for, let me help you understand why these toxic oils:

• Vegetable oil
• Canola oil
• Corn oil
• Rapeseed oil
• Cottonseed oil
• Soybean oil
• Safflower oil
• Sunflower oil
• Rice bran oil

are high on the list of ingredients to avoid.

How toxic salad dressings are harmful to you

You might have heard about terms such as: Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), trans fats, partially hydrogenated fats, seed oils, and chemically altered fats.

A quick list of those types of oils to stay away from would be: vegetable oil, canola oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, or rice bran oil.

There is a lot of chemistry and science going on with the manufacturing of these oils that can make them slightly different from each other. Some are hydrogenated (Crisco and shortenings), some of them are not…

To make this easy, just understand that all of them are created either by high heat, high pressure, added chemicals, or all three. During this intense process, the molecular structure of the fat molecules is altered. 

These toxic oils very closely mimic fat molecules, but our human bodies just can’t utilize them like if they were real fat molecules coming from unaltered sources (animal and plant fats).

When we ingest these chemically altered fats, our body tries to utilize them as if they were real. Ingesting quality sources of fat is required by our bodies. We can not survive without ingesting fat and protein, as these are two nutrients that our human bodies can’t produce on their own.

Our bodies have to do something with these chemically altered fats, because they can’t be utilized. 

Our bodies have detoxification processes, but if these processes start to become overwhelmed, bad things can start to happen. Toxins that can’t be removed through normal processes will be stored away in places like our stored body fat deposits and in the bones of our extremities.

The human body is smart. When it gets bogged down with toxicity, it tries to find places to hide away toxins so they won’t be floating around causing immediate problems. These extra storage areas are for emergency purposes and can also get overwhelmed when abused year after year. Eventually, this harboring of toxicity can cause the body to start malfunctioning.

When a person has several years worth of toxicity (chemically altered oils being a huge contributor) stored away deep down in their body fat and bones, it can be hard to convince the body to burn fat for energy (lose weight). Why would an intelligent human body want to burn any fat for energy when it knows that toxins are stored deep down in those fat tissues?

Because of this very situation, the human body will send out hormonal signals in order to keep you from burning fat (hunger/overeating, fatigue, low energy, etc.), leading to excess fat storage and obesity. This could result in becoming very resistant to losing excess weight (fat).

Systemic inflammation, immune system dysfunction, aging, cancer, and heart disease are also repercussions of long-term use of chemically altered fats.

Learn why vegetable oils are worse than smoking cigarettes and eating processed sugar by listening to this awesome podcast episode from the Keto Kamp Podcast Episode #517. You will definitely have a different viewpoint on eating these toxins after understanding more about their destructive nature.

How to choose healthy salad dressings and salad toppings

Remember, the rule of thumb is to stay away from any product that uses vegetable oil, canola oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, or rice bran oil because they are more than likely chemically altered in order to be mass produced and low cost.

This short video shows how canola oil is made. As you can tell from the manufacturing process, it is full of chemicals and dyes. Any reasonable person should reconsider ingesting this nasty chemical soup.

On the other hand, this short video shows how extra virgin olive oil is made. Even though this olive oil is still produced in a factory setting, notice how this oil is minimally processed. The oil extraction process does not use high heat, pressure, chemicals, or dyes. 

So, when 90 plus percent of the salad dressings at the store are plagued with chemically altered fats, what’s a person to do?

There are a few salad dressings out there that are not made with chemically altered fats. They are a bit more expensive because the extraction process of real animal and plant oils is more labor intensive. 

Primal Kitchen is a great choice. Walmart and Costco stock some of their salad dressings, mayonnaise, and other sauces and dressings. Their products are made with great ingredients, including olive oil and avocado oil, as opposed to the destructive seed oils (chemically altered fats).

If you decide to purchase from Primal Kitchen’s website, use the discount code Wild1811 for a 10% discount!

If you’re like me and prefer to make your own salad dressing most of the time, it’s easy!

Get some olive oil or avocado oil, seasonings, vinegar, and mayo (a quality source with no chemically altered fats such as Primal Kitchen Mayo). You can use some or all of those ingredients. Play around and you can come up with some awesome tasting dressings, right in you own kitchen, for a fraction of the price it would cost you to buy a healthy dressing.

Here’s my main dressing I make. It takes just a few minutes.

• About 4 tablespoons of olive oil
• Garlic powder, onion powder, and parsley flakes to your liking
• 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon of spicy mustard
• 1 big tablespoon of mayo (No chemically altered fats mayo. I get mine at Costco, made with avocado oil and no chemically altered oils.)
• A drip or two of Worcestershire sauce

I use a fork to whisk everything together until the mixture starts to blend (30 seconds or so). There you have it! A great tasting salad dressing that won’t break the bank or create disfunction within your body.

When it comes to salad toppings, shoot for protein and nuts/seeds as opposed to highly processed/high carb toppings (croutons and bread crumbs). 

Boiled eggs, diced ham, crumbled bacon, pumpkin seeds, sunflower kernels, walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc. add a great source of protein and crunch, without the overdose of nutrient void, carb. heavy croutons.

There are plenty of real food toppings that you can use in order to get that “crunch” as opposed to using croutons or bread crumbs.

Wild and Primal Summary

Olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil are your friends because they are real oils, extracted with minimal processing or alterations due to heat, pressure, or chemicals. Your body knows how to utilize these “real” fatty oils for processes within.

Stay away from the chemically altered oils (seeds oils) such as: vegetable oil, canola oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, or rice bran oil. Your body can not utilize these toxins for anything beneficial. What doesn’t get detoxified and removed from your body will most likely get stored away in fatty tissues, eventually contributing to weight loss resistance and other illnesses and diseases.

My mission is to help people improve their health and happiness over the long run. Helping them tap into natural and sustainable methods to create their ideal body. By using proven rules that can be applied in today’s world, we can accomplish what humans did 30,000 years ago… Becoming lean, fit, versatile, and move towards higher levels of health and happiness!!

The person that starts taking care of their health today, will clobber that person 10 years from now that doesn’t! Taking a holistic approach to improving health has made losing excess weight possible, without painful diets and exercise. Learning how our human body is genetically wired to burn fat and build lean muscle without pills, shakes, diets, or long hours in the gym just makes sense. Learn how here.

What are you training for these days? My plan is to train for a long healthy life! My personal goal is to live long and strong! If natural health and fitness is hitting your radar, it’s time to take action. Find your mentor here.