Salad dressing can prevent you from getting six pack abs

If you’re looking to gain six pack abs, adding salad to your diet is one of the best ways of doing so from a nutritional standpoint. The vegetables used in salads add so much to your diet, are extremely filling and don’t add many calories.

The downside to salad is that it tastes so bland by itself. Therefore, it’s common practice to add salad dressing to the equation to give your greens an extra kick. However, the salad dressing you purchase in your local shop could be one of the things preventing you from getting six pack abs. When it’s marketed, the public is fooled into thinking that the salad dressing is healthy when the opposite may be true.

Out of Balance

Unfortunately, salad dressing tends to be made from ingredients which are not conducive to fat loss and don’t belong in a healthy, well-balanced diet. For example, the majority of these dressings contain high fructose corn syrup which is known to be extremely unhealthy. They also contain refined soybean and Canola oil, neither of which belongs in your diet. Soybean oil is bad news because it contains an exceedingly high level of omega-6 fatty acids which compromise the omega-6 to omega-3 balance which is so crucial to good health.

Canola Oil

One of the great myths of the modern era when it comes to nutrition is the 100% acceptance that Canola oil is good for you. This isn’t to say that there are no benefits to Canola oil when clearly there are. For example, it’s high in omega-3 which helps the aforementioned omega balance. It’s relatively cheap and low in saturated fat. In fact, Canola oil is second only to olive oil in terms of healthy salad dressing ingredients. Yet salad dressing is pretty unhealthy, so what does that say about Canola oil?

There are very few studies which actually suggest that Canola oil is healthy which is surprising when one considers the universal acceptance of its goodness. Indeed, the majority of studies have been performed on rats and have shown less than impressive results as the rodents suffer from a fatty liver after taking controlled amounts of Canola oil.

This oil was actually originally produced from Rapeseed oil which contains erucic acid (toxic to humans). It’s also worth noting that the rape plant was the main source of mustard gas, the chemical used in World War I to horrific effect. Suddenly, Canola oil and by extension, salad dressings which contain it, look a lot less healthy. Add into the equation the fact that the Canadian government are said to have paid $50 million to the American FDA to have Canola oil placed on the ‘safe to eat’ list of foods and the alarm bells start ringing.

Olive Oil Trap

We’ve mentioned that olive oil is the healthiest oil in salad dressing but even then we’re not safe. It’s easy to be misled by the front labels of salad dressings which proudly proclaim that it’s made with olive oil.

In many cases, a quick look at the back label will show (in small print) that the majority of the oil used is refined Canola or soybean oil with only a tiny amount of olive oil actually used. Unless these salad dressings claim that only olive oil is used, they’re not breaking the law, just using clever marketing to give you the wrong impression.

Aside from the additional calories added by salad dressing which doesn’t help those on a quest for six pack abs, the low quality oil used is putting your health at risk. If you must use a dressing on your salad, do so sparingly and pay a little extra for a high quality product which is made from olive oil.