Use Salsa as a Salad Dressing

Salsa is a zero-fat, or in some cases a low fat, alternative for salad dressings. Most salsa however, is zero-fat.

These days, I almost always use salsa instead of salad dressing.

While non-fat, or low-fat salad dressings are ok tastewise, they still seem to have that "diet" taste. For me, salsa always tastes sinful but comes without the guilt.

I think the most attractive part of salad dressing is the salt, which salsa has also. But salsa doesn't have the fat. Salsa does have carbohydrates, but most brands sit around 2gm per 2 tbsp. Compare that to salad dressings which range between 2gm to 10gm per 2 tbsp.

The other advantage to using salsa instead of salad dressing is that you'll get more nutritional value, primarily vitamin C.

You can also try hot sauce too. I found that Cholula hot sauce is pretty good on salads. Hot sauce even burn some extra calories for you because the capsaicin in chile peppers will force your body to raise its temperature, which means having to burn calories to do so.

And in fact, if you use salsa with jalapeno peppers in it, you'll get the same calorie burning effect.

If you want to try salsa on your salads, look for plain salsa. Stay away from stuff with added fruit, or beans, corn, as these ingredients adds to the carbs.

If you're at a restaurant, go ahead and ask for salsa when the server asks what salad dressing you want. I do that all the time. If they don't have salsa, I ask for hot sauce.

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