Summer Salads

" Do you drench your salad with dressing and then overload it with your favorite toppings? Well, you don't have to give it all up -- all those goodies on there -- you just have to think moderation. Fitness nutrition editor, Sara Wells, shows us how to make the perfect salad that's actually good for you."

" There are four rules for making a healthy salad. The first is that you wanna pick colorful veggies as your base. You should feel free to load up as many as you want to. And the goal is that -- for instance here we have yellow, red, and green peppers -- you don't want your salad just to be green because different colors provide different antioxidants. And if a salad is not mostly veggies, it's really not a salad -- so feel free, I mean, that really should fill you up between the fiber. Then you want to make sure that you pick a healthy lean protein, about the size of your palm -- that's a good portion size. Here we have some grilled chicken, but grilled salmon, tuna (just not tuna salad because the mayonaise packs a lot of fat), tofu, beans, whatever it you like. You could actually add some fruit too -- sliced grapes, sliced apples -- and then you want to keep only two fats on your salad. So if you like cheese, that's one, and then your dressing would be the other. You could have avocado, you could have nuts, but only two. And the last is to keep the dressing on the side. If you're at a restaurant and it's all poured over, you'll have no idea how much you're getting. So if you have it on the side, not only can you see the portion size, but you'll probably also eat less -- just dip your fork in, dip it into your salad. It's a good way to cut back on calories and fat. So this salad, first of all, it has really heavy high fat ranch dressing sitting on top which is a no-no and it also has cheese, it has Chinese noodles on top which are fried and a bad choice. And it also has walnuts, so you're way over on the fat here and it only has -- I don't know if you can see -- but it only has some tomatoes and some cucumbers so it really doesn't have enough vegetables in it. So here we have romaine lettuce. Another good choice would be spinach or any other leafy green. Iceberg: not so good -- doesn't have much nutritional value. So I'm going to put in some lettuce as our base and then I'm gonna add three different colored peppers, and then some cucumbers. Here we have some celery and some mushrooms. And lastly some tomatoes. So really, our salad is going to be mostly vegetables. And then I'm gonna add my protein, which in this case is chicken. And again, it's roughly going to be about the size my palm -- so this is a good portion size right here. And then just to add some more variety, mix things up, I'm gonna put some grapes on it. Some feta cheese -- so that's one of my two fats. And lastly, I have a light Balsamic dressing which you can leave on the side. Or if you want to measure out 2 tablespoons, which is usually a serving, then you can feel free to pour it over. So, dig in and enjoy!"

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