To think this salad is healthy?

[Azzywhatty]

Watercress, rocket, spinach, canned mackerel in olive oil, red onion, pickled beetroot, spring onion, four baby potatoes, capers, olives, and a sprinkle of ground pumpkin and walnut, flaxseed, and chia seed, with a dressing of the olive oil from the mackerel, tsp Dijon mustard, two tsp honey, and lime juice.

YANBU - Of course that’s healthy
YABU - Not healthy - too much honey/potatoes/pickled food/whatever

healthy but revolting

It sounds really oily/greasy to me. I wouldn't personally have a dressing if the mackerel was already in olive oil.

I’d rather eat my toe clippings than this, but if you’re into this sort of thing, it sounds fine.

Sounds like the sort of salad I make at lunchtimes - especially in the summer. I'd swap out the salad leaves for loads of shredded celery, carrot and cucumber as I'm not massively keen on leaves. I'd also leave out the capers and use tinned mackerel in spring water or brine.

Dressing-wise, I always just use a tablespoon of full-fat mayo because although it's fairly high in calories, I prefer it to oil and vinegar dressings and I'm regularly busting out 500+cals a time at the gym doing weights and cardio, so a tablespoon of mayo isn't going to break the calorie bank.

I'd eat it but you can keep the olives and capers.....food of the devil

Sounds pretty good to me, though I'd not bother with an oily dressing or honey. I'm also not fond of potatoes (except roast, obv) but cooled new potatoes aren't as 'bad' as other forms from the GI perspective.

By what measure?

Sounds nice but I'd have more than 4 baby potatoes, you can have 220g of boiled potatoes for 150 calories.

Generally it's a bit of a mish mash of quite similar things with similar flavours and a bit much. Capers, olives and mackerel are all very salty, I'd lose either the capers or the olives. Pickled beetroot is also salty and sweet, and so is your dressing. I don't think the seeds are required as they are mostly fat and salt and you are already getting that from the mackerel.

I've have the leaves, potatoes, beetroot, spring onion, mackerel and dressing and add other green veg instead such as cooked green beans, edamame or broccoli.

It's probably very healthy but it sounds revolting! 😆😆

It’s better to focus on your overall diet than one meal. It looks ok, as long as you enjoyed it, then I wouldn’t worry!

Definitely healthy as in nutritious. But to some people ‘healthy’ means low calorie and anything that isn’t a single lettuce leaf and some air is unhealthy. It’s not low calorie, but is nutritionally dense.

Pretty silly question really unless you tell us what the rest of your diet is like and also your health status and goals wrt to 'healthiness'. The salad sounds delicious, well balanced and hits the major food groups with protein, carbs and healthy fats. But nonetheless some people/some health conditions really couldn't cope with some of your salad ingredients, e.g. a Crohns/IBD person might struggle with too much fibre even though fibre is generally healthy, it perhaps wouldn't be enough calories for someone underweight whereas it might be too many for someone on a very low cal diet, depending on what was eaten the rest of the day - and you can eat all the healthy salads in the world for lunch, if you wash it down with a litre of coke then have super size mcdonalds and a deep fried mars bar for dinner can you really say your diet is 'healthy' overall, probably not.

It sounds healthy but maybe the amount of vinegar and salt wouldn't be good for some people.

Sounds absolutely delicious. I'd probably lose the honey though. Or put just half a teaspoon.
Any salad with balanced ingredients is healthy. The only thing that can be bad is shop bought dressings.

It’s healthy, but there’s some amount of fat and sodium in there. I would eat it, sounds delicious, but o don’t really care too much on whether something is super healthy or not.

Depends what you mean by healthy. If you are significantly underwight and need to gain weight then this is likely to be a poor choice. If you are a normal or overweight then this sounds like a pretty good choice. Mackerel is an oily fish so protein and fat (fat is not bad!). Potato for carbs, green stuff for fibre and vitmans and minerals. Nuts and seeds are also fat, protein and minerals.

Sounds "healthy" to me on the face of it...

Mns is not the forum for these types of questions!

Well it’s a difficult question to answer really because it depends what measure you’re using to define ‘healthy’. A lot of people seem to think healthy just = low calorie.

Yabu for pretending this is an aibu. Just eat your bloody dinner.

Well, it really depends what you mean by "healthy".

For me, as a diabetic, I'd need to leave out the potatoes and the honey.

Someone trying to lose weight on a calorie controlled diet would probably want to swap out the mackerel in oil for something like tuna in springwater.

But all in all it has lots of veg and lots of nutrients, so probably comes under the umbrella of broadly "healthy". It wouldn't be a good choice for everyone though.

Not something I would enjoy (strange combination of salty and sweet) but it looks healthy enough to me.

I think it’s unhelpful to think of meals/foods as healthy or unhealthy. It’s more useful to consider, does this meet my nutritional needs right now? For example jelly babies meet the nutritional needs of someone having hypoglycaemia but not my needs for lunch.

Yeah, I voted YABU because it sounds like a stomach-turning concoction of ingredients. 😆

Why do you ask?

I think it's healthy but for me I'd omit the potatoes simply as I do low carb. I 'save' my carb allowance for wholegrains like oats & brown rice, or sweet potatoes.

I'd make the dressing from olive oil and lemon juice, no honey.

My own variation on that is the bag of mixed salad leaves, a tin of sardines in olive oil, grated carrot, cucumber, olives etc.

Sounds very healthy and delicious, but obviously you will need to follow this with a chocolate fudge sundae with extra cream, to ensure you have included all the food groups. Bon appetit.