Salad

Salads are a great lunch and dinner option to get in more non-starchy vegetables.  They are quick and easy to prepare as long as you have the ingredients.  Start with a base of baby spinach, kale, arugula, or another healthy green.  Add more vegetables if you want like broccoli, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, etc.  Include a meat/protein to make it feel more like a meal.  Our favorite proteins to include are grilled chicken, chicken salad, tuna salad, bacon, or hard boiled eggs.  You can add in fruit as flavoring such as strawberries, blueberries, grapes, mandarin oranges, or raisins.  Adding avocado slices is a good idea if the goal is to increase healthy fat consumption.  Nuts and seeds are also a great addition such as walnuts, almonds, pecans, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds.  With the avocados, nuts, and seeds, just be careful to not over do them since they will add a large amount of calories to the meal.

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Salad Dressing

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The healthiest option for salad dressing is probably an oil and vinegar combination, but there are a lot of healthy options now available in grocery stores for more traditional salad dressings like ranch, blue cheese, Caesar, etc that are being made without all of the processed chemicals.