Help Me Hack my Salad

(Heather Meyer) #1

Okay… so i love spinach salad but i find eating my spianch salad quite carby…so i hoped maybe someone could help me hack my recipe to cut down the carbs without cutting out all my favorites out of it.

Here is my recipe

2 cups fresh spinach
2 tbsp diced hot house tomato
2 tbsp red onion diced
4 tbsp soft unripened goat cheese
2 tbsp bacon bits(not simulated)
2 tbsp nutritional yeast

Dressing is

1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1.5 tbsp balsamic vinegar(the 2 carb version)
1 tsp yellow mustard
1 tbsp fresh garlic
Salt and Pepper to taste
4 tbsp heavy cream

Mix together…makes 13 tbsp roughly. I use
2-3 tbsp on my salad.

Anyone know how i can change this to make it lower carb? Is there a lighter vinegar(tried apple cider and was terrible and too much acid)

The nutritional yeast is how i get B12 because my body is low in B12 constantly… so i wpuld prefer to keep it if possible.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

  1. Take a hacksaw.

  2. Cut salad in half.

That’s how to hack a salad! :grin:

Seriously, however, most of the carbohydrate there is high in fiber, which you don’t need to count, if you don’t want to, since fiber is indigestible.

But why is the yeast in there? Do you really need it? Also, seed oils are very high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Why not make your salad dressing with avocado, coconut, or olive oil, which are much higher in monounsaturates and have a better ratio of ω-6 to ω-3 to boot?

(Heather Meyer) #3

Nutritional Yeast is in there for B Vitamins. Its basically powdered B vitamins that happen to taste good…
I had a failed wls surgery and my body does not break down or absorb vitamins easily and while i do take a B12 tablet…it doesnt help much. I get a lot more energy from taking it in nutritional yeast…probably cause its easisr to digest given its not a tablet??

I thought grapeseed oil was good for people?
I stopped using Olive oil due to its smoke point.

(Karen) #4

Onion juice or powder might be lower. I’d go Dijon, by preference… Feta vs goat cheese. Less carbs and yum!
K

(Heather Meyer) #5

when you run it through a nutritional caculator what net carb count do you get for the salad veggies?

My total appears to come out with 8 or 9 net carbs… which seems super high for a salad

(charlie3) #6

I make salad dressing once a week and eat a large salad 6 days a week. I’m always on the lookout for interesting new ingredients to try. Currently I use olive oil, wine vinagar, fresh garlic and varous seasonings. I’m intriqued by the possibility of including heavy cream. I don’t refrigerate my salad dressing because none of the ingrediants require it and because the olive oil tends to harden in the frig. If I added heavy cream would the dressing need to be refrigerated for the week?

(Mike W.) #7

To answer your last question, yes.

(Heather Meyer) #8

yes i make it and refrigerate it

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

You are absolutely right; don’t cook with the olive oil. But it’s great on salad. Grapeseed oil may be better than other seed oils (called vegetable oils, for marketing purposes), but it’s not all that great.

So what should you cook with? Butter, tallow, lard, bacon grease, and coconut oil are good. My favorites are butter and bacon grease, for the taste. The saturated and monosaturated fats they contain will benefit your cholesterol and your energy level, respectively.

If you eat meat, you will get enough B vitamins. If you like the taste of yeast, then have it, but what then will you cut out of your salad? The spinach?

Of course, we don’t need any carbohydrate at all, so you perhaps don’t need to eat as much salad as you think. (I eat salad primarily because I love blue cheese dressing.) The essential part of a well-formulated ketogenic diet is keeping carbohydrate low enough to permit our insulin level to drop, which in turn allows our fat cells to mobilize their fat store to be consumed as fuel. The rest is tweaking for maximum benefit.

For example, we want a reasonable amount of protein—anywhere in the range of 0.6-2.0 grams per kilo of lean body mass a day, depending on the expert. Then, to make up for all the calories lost by cutting out carbohydrate, we eat fat until we stop being hungry. Fat barely stimulates insulin production at all, especially when compared to carbohydrate and protein, which makes it the safest source of calories, if we want to lose excess stored fat. (Ironic, isn’t it?) But in the absence of insulin, we can trust our body’s satiety signaling to control our appetite, so that we will give our body enough energy, while still allowing it to metabolize excess stored fat.

(Natasha) #10

I think it’s the onions… I LOVE them but they are comparatively high in carbs. Nutritional yeast is also high, but I understand you need to keep that for the vitamins.

(Troy) #11

Whole
Crushed
Smashed
Chopped
Diced
Granulated
Pulsed
Crumbled

Oh…got carried away
Sorry

Pork Rinds😁

Enjoy

(Heather Meyer) #12

Yah… i dont eat veggies at all as of currently. I live off of Turkey, Chicken, Eggs, Fish and nuts and seeds. I have the occasional avocado and use onion in making dishes(more as a condiment) but thats about it.

I actually cant eat beef. If i eat GROUND beef…i end up needing to go to the hospital with severe stomach pain. Whereas if i eat steak, i dont have as disabling effects but i still get so much gas and bloating and cramps that it makes me uncomfortable and naseous for several hours.
(I have tried using high potency digestive enzymes and medications from Drs to combat the issue and NOTHING)

Consequently i have a problem digesting and tolerating lots of raw and cooked veggies including cauliflour, broccoli, large quantities of raw tomato, cooked tomato sauces, large amounts of onion and lettuces. Spinach is the only green leafy type that i can digest if i use an enzyme before hand

So beef is out…so i need to derive my B vitamins from somewhere else…
Any ideas?

#13

Maybe Let go of The Onion and the yeast?

(The amazing autoimmune 🦄) #14

I love onions, but I have had to let go of them and rarely eat them. I will use one spring onion on a salad 3 carbs, Try adding mushrooms. Boiled eggs or avocado. I also make homemade dressing blue cheese, I use avocado oil making the mayo.

(Heather Meyer) #15

Maybe i will try cutting out my onion :’(
RIP Red Onion
I think im going to try and switch to white wine vinegar for a vinegrette…

(shawnk) #16

If you really want onions, chopped green onions (scallions) have less carbs.

(Running from stupidity) #17

Not really. Salads are actually like that in reality.

OTOH, that’s far better for you than, say, pecan brittle, so you’re WELL ahead there.

(charlie3) #18

My routine dinner salad measures out at about 25 net carbs mostly because of onion and red cabbage. That bumps total net carbs for the day to 50. Countering that is a large volume of activity/exercise that burns about 900 calories a day on average on top of a BMR of 1400-1600 calories. I believe that the high energy demand from muscle easily absorbs the extra 30 grams of carbs so I can keep my onion and cabbage. Exercise makes keto easier for me.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #19

Be careful! The point of keeping carbohydrate intake low is to keep the glucose it contains from stimulating insulin production. Even if you are eventually burning the glucose, too much in the bloodstream at any given time stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin, which is the body’s fat storage hormone, among other things. Chronically elevated insulin levels are the thing that the ketogenic diet was invented to prevent. Granted, some people have a higher carbohydrate tolerance than others, but the idea is to be sure and stay below whatever your threshold is. Too much insulin in the blood causes a number of problems, not just weight gain.

(Katie) #20

Increase your meat. Meat has the B vitamins that are readily-available for the human body’s use.

Try other salad bases that might have a lower carbohydrate count. Look into collard greens, mustard greens, iceberg lettuce, romaine, leafy lettuce, etc.