# store bought salad dressing?



## boomchakabowwow (Aug 13, 2015)

i eat a dark green salad everyday. at work for lunch.

at home, i tend to make simple dressings. fun and easy. at work, i just want to eat and get on with the day.

i barely use any dressings. maybe a teaspoon..just to add a hint of "something". i can eat it dry, but i dont want to burn out on greens. i went two weeks when my lime tree was giving fruit..just a squeeze of juice..but arugula cant get pretty mundane..fast i can make a bottle last a looooonnnggg time.

any store bought OTC dressings that stand out? any recommendations?


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## Bill13 (Aug 13, 2015)

Do you care about the amount of calories? What type do you prefer ie blue, Italian, etc?


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## boomchakabowwow (Aug 13, 2015)

Bill13 said:


> Do you care about the amount of calories? What type do you prefer ie blue, Italian, etc?



great question!

no..i use so little. i can eat anything..any type of dressing. 

i've been eating a Trader Joes peanut/thai dressing..but it is getting old.


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## panda (Aug 13, 2015)

http://makotodressing.com/makoto-salad-dressing-products.html


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## aboynamedsuita (Aug 13, 2015)

I've never found a store bought dressing I liked, taste-wise was okay but often too much sugars, preservatives or oils that aren't fit for human consumption. I just make my own in bulk when I can commit a couple hours

I buy about 6lbs of lemons and juice them assembly line style and add a bit of organic apple cider vinegar (1/4 cup?) along with some ginger and garlic (much more garlic than ginger). I put it in the vitamix and let it do it's thing. It comes out perfectly smooth, but if you like the texture you could use a micro plane grater or a regular food processor.

I get about two quarts/litres from this and it'll keep for up to a few months in the fridge. The tastes evolve as it ages and I can appreciate both fresh and well aged (aka naturally fermented). I bought a bunch of 8 dram (bit over 2 Tbsp IIRC) glass vials from a lab supply company for transport to the office for lunch and usually use it 50:50 with olive, flaxseed and/or hemp oil.


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## boomchakabowwow (Aug 13, 2015)

tjangula said:


> I've never found a store bought dressing I liked, taste-wise was okay but often too much sugars, preservatives or oils that aren't fit for human consumption. I just make my own in bulk when I can commit a couple hours
> 
> I buy about 6lbs of lemons and juice them assembly line style and add a bit of organic apple cider vinegar (1/4 cup?) along with some ginger and garlic (much more garlic than ginger). I put it in the vitamix and let it do it's thing. It comes out perfectly smooth, but if you like the texture you could use a micro plane grater or a regular food processor.
> 
> I get about two quarts/litres from this and it'll keep for up to a few months in the fridge. The tastes evolve as it ages and I can appreciate both fresh and well aged (aka naturally fermented). I bought a bunch of 8 dram (bit over 2 Tbsp IIRC) glass vials from a lab supply company for transport to the office for lunch and usually use it 50:50 with olive, flaxseed and/or hemp oil.



great idea!! maybe i should run some old dressing bottle thru the wash..you have me thinking.


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## EdipisReks (Aug 13, 2015)

tjangula said:


> that aren't fit for human consumption.



BS.


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## aboynamedsuita (Aug 13, 2015)

Perhaps a bit of a stretch but I'll stay away from genetically engineered soybean and canola oils as well as sodium benzoate and propylene glycol


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## EdipisReks (Aug 13, 2015)

tjangula said:


> Perhaps a bit of a stretch but I'll stay away from genetically engineered soybean and canola oils as well as sodium benzoate and propylene glycol



I guess you won't be consuming any soybean or canola oil that you don't make yourself from plants that you grew, from seeds with known provenance, pollinated only by other plants that you grew from seeds with known provenance, in an airtight dome. And you have to use seeds from ancestral stock, which haven't existed for thousands of years. GMOs are good. Nearly every piece of produce consumed by man is a GMO, because agriculture is making GMOs. Nature also makes GMOs. You are a GMO. A substantial amount of your, and mine, and everybody's genome is edogenous retroviruses. Life produced by sexual reproduction is a completely uncontrolled GMO. 

Sodium Benzoate and Propylene glycol are also perfectly safe in the limited amounts that are found in food stuff.


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## aboynamedsuita (Aug 13, 2015)

Okay, if you say so


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## EdipisReks (Aug 13, 2015)

tjangula said:


> Okay, if you say so



I don't say so, millions of man hours of research does.


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## aboynamedsuita (Aug 13, 2015)

Whatever


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## EdipisReks (Aug 13, 2015)

And another one for the ignore list.


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## Zwiefel (Aug 14, 2015)

EdipisReks said:


> I guess you won't be consuming any soybean or canola oil that you don't make yourself from plants that you grew, from seeds with known provenance, pollinated only by other plants that you grew from seeds with known provenance, in an airtight dome. And you have to use seeds from ancestral stock, which haven't existed for thousands of years. GMOs are good. Nearly every piece of produce consumed by man is a GMO, because agriculture is making GMOs. Nature also makes GMOs. You are a GMO. A substantial amount of your, and mine, and everybody's genome is edogenous retroviruses. Life produced by sexual reproduction is a completely uncontrolled GMO.
> 
> Sodium Benzoate and Propylene glycol are also perfectly safe in the limited amounts that are found in food stuff.



Yes, the preponderance of evidence on this topic is quite clear.


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## EdipisReks (Aug 14, 2015)

Zwiefel said:


> Yes, the preponderance of evidence on this topic is quite clear.



Absolutely. 

Having said that, I pretty much only eat salad dressing that I've made myself, however, because it tastes better than the jarred stuff. If I were eating the jarred stuff, I'd eat Newman's Own or Makoto. They aren't bad.


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## Zwiefel (Aug 14, 2015)

If I'm at home, only homemade. And I generally avoid salad anywhere else for that reason.


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## EdipisReks (Aug 14, 2015)

Zwiefel said:


> If I'm at home, only homemade. And I generally avoid salad anywhere else for that reason.



Same here. Greens are a major cause of salmonella poisoning. Who knows how your local restaurant sources or washes their greens?


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## chiffonodd (Aug 14, 2015)

EdipisReks said:


> I guess you won't be consuming any soybean or canola oil that you don't make yourself from plants that you grew, from seeds with known provenance, pollinated only by other plants that you grew from seeds with known provenance, in an airtight dome. And you have to use seeds from ancestral stock, which haven't existed for thousands of years. GMOs are good. Nearly every piece of produce consumed by man is a GMO, because agriculture is making GMOs. Nature also makes GMOs. You are a GMO. A substantial amount of your, and mine, and everybody's genome is edogenous retroviruses. Life produced by sexual reproduction is a completely uncontrolled GMO.
> 
> Sodium Benzoate and Propylene glycol are also perfectly safe in the limited amounts that are found in food stuff.



GMOs are an easy target. There's really no research showing that GMOs are per se bad for you. And, like you say, they are pretty much impossible to avoid to some extent. But there definitely is nothing wrong with trying to eat minimally processed foods in general. That's probably the better criteria. And I wouldn't be surprised if what people popularly think of as GMOs tend to be more prevalent in more processed food. 

Anyway, for a healthy diet, I like what Michael Pollan said: "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much."

Except of course when it's time for ribs :hungry::hungry::hungry:


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## EdipisReks (Aug 14, 2015)

chiffonodd said:


> And I wouldn't be surprised if what people popularly think of as GMOs tend to be more prevalent in more processed food.



You'd might be surprised, especially given that almost every piece of fruit and veg sold is a GMO. They are almost all cross-bred, at the very least, and cross-breeding is genetically modifying organisms. A hell of a lot of non-processed fruit and vegetable have had gene splicing done via retrovirus, in order to surgically add or subtract traits. That is both in the lab, and naturally.


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## chiffonodd (Aug 14, 2015)

EdipisReks said:


> You'd might be surprised, especially given that almost every piece of fruit and veg sold is a GMO. They are almost all cross-bred, at the very least, and cross-breeding is genetically modifying organisms. A hell of a lot of non-processed fruit and vegetable have had gene splicing done via retrovirus, in order to surgically add or subtract traits. That is both in the lab, and naturally.



What's your grad program in, if you don't mind me asking?


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## masont (Aug 14, 2015)

I never thought I'd see the day when the pro GMO people were more annoying than the anti GMO people. Is it too much to ask to just ignore it and let it go if someone doesn't want to eat GMO canola oil?

My go to homemade salad dressing:



> bottle of orange champagne vinegar (trader joe's)
> ½ cup raw garlic
> 2 tbsp rosemary
> 3 tbsp dijon mustard
> ...



It lasts a long time, is very tasty, and I'm pretty happy eating all the ingredients. If I (my wife) gets sick of eating that, we like the TJ's refrigerated salad dressings.


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## Aleque (Aug 15, 2015)

If we are talking store bought brands, I like Brianna's. My family likes the strawberry vinaigrette. It's a little on the sweet side, but just a little on some greens would do the trick. I'm sort of in the same boat as the OP with little to no dressing on my greens. Just enough to accentuate the greens is enough for me.


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