salad days: when to eat a pile of leaves, and when to avoid them

RDs & SALADS

Ever try Googling ‘Dietitian’? If you do, you’ll see a grid of people with salad ingredients on their desks. How does this make sense? Not a single RD I know keeps a bundle of raw produce on their desk. That is impractical as hell. Plus, we don’t just blindly recommend salads to people all day. That’s a common misconception that needs to change immediately, if not sooner.

It’s odd working a job where people associate you with salads. Not good salads, either.

To be fair, it’s easy to make a shitty salad. I didn’t know about delicious, crave-able salads until I hit the second decade of my life.

ME & SALADS

Salad days: plural noun. a time of youthful inexperience or indiscretion. Example: My salad days / When I was green in judgment …—William Shakespeare 1

As a kid, I thought salads were gross.

It was the 90’s and the salad buffets were raging. It was always the same combo of partially wilted iceberg lettuce, graying carrot shreds, flavorless, out-of-season cherry tomatoes, piled up and meant to be bathed in a kiddie pool of ranch dressing. I wasn’t into it, so I just thought I hated salads.

That combination is a salad stifled, made slightly more redeemable with croutons and a sprinkle of cheese, but with so much more potential. If you’re genuinely into this, keep enjoying it, by all means, but please know there is a whole world of balanced, interesting salads with delicious flavors and varied textures waiting for you, should you step over the threshold.

If not, I get it. I wasn’t even willing to try salads until my early 20’s, a chaotic time in my life that revolved around work, community college, high highs, and low lows. Working toward a studio arts major at the time, I’d just finished up the morning in a ceramics workshop. A friend and I both had the afternoon off and met up at a spot along the river between Pittsburgh’s 10th St. and Birmingham St. bridges. A few steps off the train tracks and a quick descent brought us to a concrete slab platform along the Monongahela River’s edge, about 10 feet above the water. The platforms were probably useful in commerce once, but at some point became relegated to grounds for youthful shenanigans, as evidenced by the colorful graffiti, cigarette butts, and empty bottles scattered around.

Then and now, the rivers of downtown Pittsburgh aren’t the kind you swim in unless you’re open to making yourself host to a colorful assortment of rashes. You’d go to the river to sit on the concrete slab, jaggin’ arahnd with friends, and watch the water glisten under the city’s buildings, traffic, and trees. The view was, and probably still is, an equal mix of grace and grit. Somehow it didn’t smell bad.

In retrospect, it wasn’t a safe setting, especially at night, but we were young with partially developed brains and oftentimes enough OE or Mickey’s in our systems to barely care. Here and there, people would bring instruments and sing. Depending on where we were along the river, sometimes we’d build small fires, either for ambiance or warmth. Sometimes we’d have to scatter because of the police

This particular day was during the very beginning of autumn, one of the best times to roam around Pittsburgh. We talked, rolled a few spliffs, lazily puffed on them, then lay on our backs and watched the leaves of all colors get rustled by the calm wind, listening to the river in the background. After I don’t know how long, my friend sat up, reached into his backpack, and pulled an expertly wrapped sandwich and a small plastic clamshell of salad out. He offered me some and I told him I wasn’t into salads. He insisted. I was hesitant, but also hungry and didn’t have anything to eat on hand, so I buckled. Worth noting here how rare it is to be peer pressured in an isolated setting by a heavily tattooed, mohawk and leather laden man in his mid-20’s to taste a salad. There are some good ones out there.

In the plastic clamshell was a cluster of mixed greens, blue cheese crumbles, whole Kalamata olives, and toasted sunflower seeds, all evenly coated in an herb-speckled sheen of dressing. Up until that moment I had never had blue cheese or olives before; I thought they smelled weird and looked kinda gross. I agreed to one small bite.

In that moment, I wasn’t intentionally trying to expand my taste palette, but this salad was on point. The blue cheese crumbles were tangy and paired perfectly with the smooth, salty olives. The crunch from the roasted sunflower seeds switched up the texture, added some depth of flavor, and it was all tied together by the herby, punchy, and perfectly balanced vinegar and oil dressing. My friend saw my eyes light up and just said, “I know, right?”

New food experiences can open us or close us. That day by the river, a new world of flavors opened up to me. But now, working as a RD, just because I like salads more than I used to doesn’t mean that I promote suffering through them just for the nutrients.

SOCIETY & SALADS
Complex associations have formed around salads because they’re often considered one of the quintessential “healthy” foods. Like most things in nutrition, though, it’s not that simple. There are near-countless enjoyable options for meals and snacks that can be both delicious and nourishing. Losing joy by only eating foods we don’t like just because they’re nutrient-dense isn’t a healthy mindset. Having salads instead of a full meal to cut calories isn’t necessarily “healthy” either. Also, if gastrointestinal symptoms are present, a bowl of raw food can worsen symptoms like diarrhea, bloating, and more.

Below is a list of things to consider if you’re in a phase of salad suffering or if you’re salad curious:

Sometimes I wonder why, as a society, we chose salads to indicate the ultimate “healthy” meal, you know? So many foods and combinations of foods are just as nutrient-dense. Maybe it’s just easier to sell something when it promises absolutes and turns into symbol instead of just another thing that we can enjoy eating.

“Healthy” is a tricky word. In truth, health is never a fixed state. There are no guarantees, no ways to completely control the body. It’s too much pressure to think that we have to eat “perfectly” to stay healthy. In appointments with patients and clients, I find it endlessly fascinating when we get to discuss ties and associations to the word “healthy,” and unpack the misinformation. I picture the process a lot like sorting through items in boxes in a dusty attic. We analyze the association, decide whether it’s beneficial, harmful, or sometimes just silly, and use exercises to work on them from there.

I wish people wouldn’t keep thinking that the job of a Registered Dietitian can be reduced to just telling people to shame themselves into eating shitty salads and other foods that don’t bring joy. Dietitians need a rebrand. Next time you think of us, instead of seeing a caricature of a persistent salad pusher, try picturing someone who understands and elevates the joy of eating, who has been extensively trained to collaborate with people to find foods that nourish and satisfy, and who believes that trying new things, even reluctantly at first, can deepen our connection to food and nutrition and enrich life instead of depleting it. And who couldn’t use even just a little more joy in the day?

1, “Salad days.” Merriam-Webster.com Simple Definition, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/simple/salad%20days. Accessed 10 May. 2026.