Those who don’t love salads will fall for the classic potato salads.
Even non-vegetarians also like potatoes in their dishes as they don’t ever bore their taste.
For that same reason, potato salad has changed my attitude towards the all-American side as it is one of their staple salad items.
But is potato salad healthy or nothing much more than being delicious?
Well, there is nothing terrible within the potatoes themselves for which you can count them as a healthy ingredient.
But potato salad can be healthy and not as well. It can contain many other elements other than the potato. Ultimately, it depends on you preparing your salad to make it a healthier food option.
The article is dedicated to healthy potato salads based on various scientifically proven research. Read till the last, or else you may end up missing any of the valuable resources regarding the topic.
Is Potato Salad Healthy?
From the point of view of a nutritionist, anything that contains the righteous ingredients required for one’s individual goals, the right amount of intake, and provides optimal health benefits is considered healthy.
The same thing also makes sense for the salad you like to consume throughout your day. Many of us prefer a salad with our main meal for adding taste.
However, some people also select them as the source of an individual meal. As a result, It is seen that a large portion of the calories is coming from the salad, which makes it super important to be healthy.
For example, imagine you take 2000 calories a day, and 1500 calories come only from the rice. If the rice itself is not considered as a healthy food item, then how would you ever imagine an overall healthy diet where ¾ portion of the diet is coming from unhealthy sources?
Similarly, the salad also secures a large portion of the calories in our diet, due to which it is a must to ensure that they are coming from a rich source.
We have understood how a salad can be healthy and the importance of the salad being nutritional. Now we will get the answers: is potato salad healthy or not!
With that said, potato salad can be healthy and can also be a thing to avoid, mainly depending on the food you need according to your goals.
Again, your goals will also set the list of ingredients that you can add to your potato salad. If you do it accordingly, such as using hard-boiled eggs, adding some healthy vegetables and potatoes, cutting mayonnaise, using yogurt as alternatives, and many more.
Things can again differ depending on the type of physique you want or maintain.
Overall, we can conclude that it can be possible to serve that delicious potato salad as a healthier dieting option if one follows all the rules and understands what he needs!
How to Prepare Healthy Potato Salad?
Now, you are sure that potato salad can be healthy, it is not enough for you to know. Instead, the most crucial thing you first need to acknowledge is the ways and procedures of preparing your healthy potato salads, which is the primary key to health terms.
If you don’t know in the first place about the right way of preparing a potato salad, then the salad may end up turning as devastating as it comes to benefits when designed in the right way.
With that said, let us learn about the preparation of healthy potato salad-
- Prepare hard-boiled eggs for your potato salad and dice them into small pieces.
- Place all the potatoes selected for your salad in a large container that can hold enough water. Ensure water covers the potato by 1 inch at the top and mix the required salt into the water. Boil the water depending on the size of the potatoes for 10-20 minutes and avoid overcooking. Boil till the potatoes become tinder as over boiling can make them mushy.
- Now, start preparing for the dressing of your salad, for which you can take help from a food processor or blender. Add olive oil, Greek yogurt, celery salt, mustard, garlic, black pepper, and vinegar to the food processor. Also, cut 2 green onions into pieces of 4 and add them.
- Cut the potatoes into small chunks according to your want and when the potatoes are still hot, pour ¾ portions of the dressing on them.
- Gently stir the dressings to combine with potatoes. At first, it may look like a lot of sauce but let it rest for 10 minutes for absorption.
- Taste it out and add more pepper or salt if needed. Refrigerate until it’s ready to be served.
- Before serving, add the rest of the dressings and taste additional salt as potatoes tend to drink it up. This you are all prepared with your delicious healthy potato salad.
How Much Potato Salad intake is a day Healthier?
Now that you have got the right recipe for your healthy salad, it doesn’t mean that you can eat as much as you desire! Anything in excess is always harmful and not the way to go. The water we drink for life can also become the same thing to take our life if consumed in excess.
So, how much of the potato salad is too much? According to their maintenance calories and goals, it largely depends from person to person.
Suppose anyone has a particular goal, whether a weight loss program or gaining weight, they have to consume accordingly as prescribed by the trainer or nutritionist. Again, if one needs to maintain their weight, they need to approach a different diet program that varies mainly on the consumption level.
Following the calories-in-out principle, one can easily make potato salad favorable to their diet with the proper consumption.
The very first thing to do is to find out your maintenance calories. You can easily do it by considering your BMI and activity level. You can do it easily through the available maintenance calorie counting sides online. All you need to do is dial your weight, height, age, and activity level.
Now, for example, if your maintenance calories are 2500, it means that anything above 2500 calories will cause you to gain weight, and anything less will help to lose weight. If your goal is to maintain weight, you will be consuming 2500 calories throughout the day.
Under such a case, you won’t want more than 300-500 calories coming from your potato salad.
If you take 1000 calories only coming from the salad, then most probably, you’ll be exceeding 2500 calories in a day coming from all those other heavy meals that you take during breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
300-500 calories from salads is a rough estimation that we could provide for the ease of your interpretation. In reality, the ultimate thing is to have a total of 2500 calories or equal to your maintenance calories and no more or less than that.
End of the day, it doesn’t matter how much potato salad you are taking, but the calories should not be less or exceed the suggested amount for you and your respective goal.
Does Potato Salad Alone in your Diet is Healthier for you?
No, it doesn’t matter how much healthy a food is, but it alone is never capable of serving you with all those macro and micronutrients you need to lead your day.
Besides the three most influential macronutrients like carbohydrates, protein, and fat, you also need to ensure all the micronutrients such as iron, calcium, etc.
Potato salad is rich in the macronutrient known as carbohydrates. But, it doesn’t provide enough with other macros like fat and especially protein.
In the case of micronutrients, potato is rich in potassium and some of the other vitamins and minerals. But, there is a list of many vitamins and minerals available, all of which don’t come from potato salad.
Fats provide energy and heat to our body, and protein helps build and repair the muscles. And various vitamins and minerals all together act as a catalyst to add to the functions of our body and all those internal reactions that take place.
So, to enable all these, we need to take a combination of various food items that are good sources of all the nutrients required for the human body. Also, one can take supplements if one cannot take all the nutrients from the diet.
What are the Nutrition Contents of a Healthy Potato Salad?
The nutrition contents of food is a worldwide recognized procedure to identify the calories coming out of a particular food and thus help individuals consume accordingly. All over, it helps a person to assist to his healthy diet.
For the same reason, we are putting the potato salad’s nutrition contents, which is given in a chart.
| Nutrition Facts of 100g potato Salad |
| Serving size 100g |
| Calories 210kcal |
| Fats 10g |
| Carbohydrates 22g |
| Protein 8g |
| Cholesterol 95mg |
| Fiber 3g |
| Calcium 64mg |
| Iron 1mg |
| Potassium 574mg |
Conclusion:
Last but not least, potato salad is indisputably a great energy source due to being loaded with carbs. Therefore, they are a great source of calories for those in weight loss programs. The only thing one needs to refrain from is to stay away from overconsuming, which may slow down the metabolism and cause weight gain.
By following all the instructions per the article, you can most definitely expect your potato salad to be a healthy choice!