My Green Salad

There is a consensus that green salad is tasty and healthy, but what about fiber in green salad?

To begin with the basics of dietary fiber, there exists two types of fiber: soluble, the fiber that will be fermented into by-products, and insoluble (that which won’t).

– Fiber is good to improve satiety (it fills you up, adding fewer calories and keeps you full for a pretty long time), though you eat less helping you with weight control.

– Green salad has more insoluble fiber vs. soluble which helps lower cholesterol and prevents constipation. 

– The fiber from green salad helps move waste out of the colon which can improve the overall health of the colon (possibly having an impact on cancer).

Green salad is not the food that contains the most fiber, however. In general, it is considered to provide a high level when there is at least 4.5-5g of fiber per serving or more. In comparison, normal levels of fiber would be between 2.5 and 4g per serving.

Salad greens can  be grouped into four main categories (the most common eaten in North America): lettuce, cabbage, chicory and spinach. Lettuce (Butterhead, Crisphead, Romaine at between 1 and 2g per 100g) have the least amount of dietary fiber, followed by spinach (2.2g per 100g) and then cabbage (broccoli at 2.6g) to end with Chicory Greens (curly endive, radicchio, and puntarelle at around 4g per 100g).

Of course, dietary fiber is not the only thing to consider when selecting salad green as they provide many nutrients, minerals and vitamins and provide many other different benefits.