Research performed by Melody Brown (see research article), demonstrates that after ingestion of the salads with fat-free salad dressing, the appearance of a variety of vitamins (carotene, ß-carotene, and lycopene) in the blood stream was very low. Reduced-fat salad dressing resulted in a slight but small increase in vitamin levels.
Full-fat salad dressing resulted in the highest measurable levels of these vitamins. The other aspect of low-fat salad dressings is that they are often much higher in carbohydrates than their full-fat versions. Don’t worry so much about the extra fat intake – it’s primarily the excess body fat that increases your blood cholesterol levels, not the fat in the foods we eat.
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Dr. Nemechek, I’m glad I remembered to look for this. Mike mentioned you had started a blog, and I’ve got you listed in my RSS reader as a regular read now.
I hadn’t thought about the use of high-fat dressing on salad. Salad eating seems to go hand-in-hand with the low-fat training we’ve all recieved over the years, so it feels counter-intuitive. I’m glad you brought this up, because next time, I’m going to have them bring on the blue cheese!