Are All Salad Dressings Fattening?

Traditional mayonnaise-based salad dressings such as Ranch, Thousand Island, and French can be very fattening. However, several years ago, I learned how to make all kinds of salad dressings while working at a local restaurant. The house dressing was similar to French and the basic ingredients could be altered to make other dressings.

The fattening part is the mayonnaise, but fat-free or low-fat mayonnaise, when combined with other ingredients and spices, tastes just as good as regular but without the fat. And those of us who love to pile on the dressing can indulge without fear of gaining weight or damaging our health.

What's more, we don't have to worry about having someone's favorite dressing on hand because we can make just about any of the popular dressings with items we usually always have on hand right in our kitchen.

The basic ingredients

-1 1/2 cups of regular, low-fat or fat-free mayonnaise

-1/2 cup of ketchup

- 1 teaspoon of mustard

- 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

- 1 teaspoon of sugar or Sweetener (optional)

- 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil.

For Thousand Island dressing simply add a tablespoon of sweet pickle relish and feel free to incorporate other spices you might enjoy such as oregano or parsley. The dressing must be mixed vigorously with a spoon or whisk to get it nice and smooth.

Also, there are packages of ranch dressing seasonings mixes you can get in the produce section of most any supermarket. Simply mix the package with regular, fat-free or low-fat mayonnaise and mix thoroughly.

There are a number of people who suffer with high cholesterol and high blood pressure who can't have any of those high-fat salad dressings so this would be ideal for them.

However, for those who could care less about fat content, the recipes are still handy to have because as mentioned before, most everyone has these ingredients on hand to whip up just about any kind of salad dressing they might need. For the cheese lovers, simply grate the cheese, melt it in a pot with milk or buttermilk then when it cools just blend it in.

In any case, salad dressing doesn't have to be fattening. Low-fat and fat-free mayonnaise leaves little to be desired when using it on a sandwich, but mixed with all of the other ingredients, it makes no difference at all. Why eat unhealthy food when you have a tasty alternative?