The Perfect Post-Holiday Detox Salad
Forget the idea of salad as a side dish — today, a big, juicy, nutrient-packed salad takes center stage. You just need plenty of cruciferous greens, colorful veggies, heart-healthy nuts, savory beans, spicy onions, tofu, avocado, berries — and a delicious dressing, of course. Here are five doctor-approved tips for making the best salad ever.
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1. Start with the greens — they're super-foods!
This forms the base of your salad, so make it a nutritious one. Five cups of leafy greens, including cruciferous veggies, adds a powerful nutritional punch to your meal. Green vegetables are the healthiest foods on the planet. One of my favorite sayings is "The more you eat green, the more you get lean."
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2. Add lots of color.
Green, red, and yellow peppers, as well as tomatoes, berries, and other colorful foods owe their brilliant hues to flavonoids and carotenoids, which are phytochemicals that help defend the body’s tissues against oxidative damage.
3. Don’t forget the onions.
Onions, and other members of the allium family, make everything taste better with their unique flavor profiles. But their most important benefit lies in the anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties of their sulfide compounds – yes, the same ones that make your eyes water.
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4. Toss in some beans.
There’s something magical about beans. Not only do they add a satisfying note of starchy creaminess to a salad — beans contain soluble and insoluble fiber and lots of resistant starch. They have anti-diabetic and anti-inflammatory properties.
5. Dress it for success.
Before you dig in to that heaping bowl of fresh vegetables, remember to add in some healthy fats, which will help you absorb the micronutrients in the salad. Eating a healthful dressing that contains nuts and seeds helps dieters feel satiated and reduces the risk of heart disease and cancer.
For a more comprehensive look at Dr. Fuhrman’s Formula for building the perfect salad, download our handy infographic (above). For a complete Fuhrman’s Formula Salad Kit, which includes infographics on creating the perfect salad dressing plus three recipes, click here.
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Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a family physician, NY Times best-selling author and nutritional researcher who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods. He is an internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing, and has appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows including The Dr. Oz Show, the Today Show, Good Morning America, and Live with Kelly and Michael. Dr. Fuhrman’s own hugely successful PBS television shows, 3 Steps to Incredible Health!, Dr. Fuhrman’s Immunity Solution!, and Dr. Fuhrman’s End Dieting FOREVER!, bring nutritional science to homes all across America.
Dr. Fuhrman’s #1 New York Times best-selling book, Eat to Live, originally published in 2003 (Little Brown), has sold over 1,000,000 copies and has been published in 16 foreign language editions. In October 2012, Super Immunity (HarperOne) reached the NY Times best sellers list and in January 2013, The End of Diabetes (HarperOne) became his third NY Times Best seller. Dr. Fuhrman’s most recent books, Eat to Live Cookbook (HarperOne) reached #1 on the best seller list during its debut week in October 2013, and The End of Dieting (HarperOne), released in March 2014 was #2 on the list for its debut. In addition, Dr. Fuhrman has written several other popular books on nutritional science, including: Eat for Health (Gift of Health Press), Disease-Proof Your Child (St. Martin's Griffin), Fasting and Eating for Health (St. Martin's Griffin) and Dr. Fuhrman's Nutritarian Handbook and ANDI Food Scoring Guide (Gift of Health Press).
Dr Fuhrman is the father of Nutritarian eating. His health (longevity) equation H = N/C, (healthy life expectancy is proportional to lifetime intake of micronutrient diversity and quantity per calorie) has interested scientists the world over. As an advocate of diets rich in a vast array of plant micronutrients per calorie, his ANDI scoring system, featured in Whole Foods Market, has directed millions of consumers to eat an anti-cancer diet-style. Dr. Fuhrman’s discoveries in differentiating the physiology and biochemistry of true hunger from addictive hunger (which he calls toxic hunger) is essential for understanding and resolving both health and weight concerns, and an essential element to solve our nation’s obesity and health crisis.