Which salad toppings have the most calories?
The dressing, then nuts and seeds, cheese, croutons, tortilla strips and bacon. An ounce of almonds is about 164 calories, tortilla strips 142, croutons 130 and cheddar 114. Half a cup of chickpeas is 134, about the same as the croutons, but it brings 6 g of fiber and 7.5 g of protein with it.
Each topping looks small on its own, and that’s how a salad gets big. On a caesar, the croutons, the parmesan and 2 tablespoons of dressing are three small lines that add up to 336 calories, sitting on 24 calories of romaine.
What we’d do
Keep the toppings that pay you back in protein or fiber, and treat the rest as a garnish. Swap the croutons for chickpeas, which costs 4 calories and adds 5 g of fiber. Swap the dried cranberries for a cup of strawberries, which saves about 40 calories. Keep nuts or seeds if you love them, but as a spoonful. An ounce is 160 to 185 calories, and it’s easy to pour two.
The toppings, most calories first
| Topping | Amount | Calories | Protein | Fiber |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walnuts | 1 oz, 28 g | 185 | 4 g | 1.9 g |
| Sunflower seeds | 1 oz | 165 | 5 g | 2.6 g |
| Almonds | 1 oz | 164 | 6 g | 3.3 g |
| Tortilla strips | 1 oz | 142 | 2 g | 1.8 g |
| Chickpeas | half a cup, 82 g | 134 | 7.5 g | 6.2 g |
| Croutons | 1 oz | 130 | 2.8 g | 1.4 g |
| Cheddar | 1 oz | 114 | 7 g | 0 |
| Black beans | half a cup, 86 g | 114 | 7.5 g | 7.5 g |
| Quinoa, cooked | half a cup | 111 | 4 g | 2.6 g |
| Bacon | 3 slices, 19 g | 109 | 6 g | 0 |
| Dried cranberries | a quarter cup | 92 | 0 | 2.5 g |
| Egg, hard cooked | 1 large | 78 | 6 g | 0 |
| Feta | 1 oz | 75 | 4 g | 0 |
| Corn | half a cup | 66 | 2.5 g | 2 g |
| Avocado | 1 oz | 50 | 1 g | 1.4 g |
| Parmesan, grated | 2 tbsp | 46 | 4 g | 0 |
| Black olives | 5 large | 25 | 0 | 0.7 g |
And the dressings, per tablespoon: olive oil 119, mayo 99, a 3 to 1 oil and vinegar 90, caesar 80, blue cheese 77, Italian 69, French 67, ranch 64 and thousand island 59. Most people pour two to four.
Why some toppings fill you and some don’t
Calories are only half the story. Two toppings with the same calories can do very different jobs. The chickpeas and the croutons are 4 calories apart, but the chickpeas carry more than four times the fiber and almost three times the protein. In feeding trials, people felt fuller after higher-protein meals, and the cobb, the caesar and the chicken salad all come up short on fiber in our bowl builder. The croutons are mostly bread and oil.
The croutons, bacon, feta and olives also bring salt. An ounce of croutons has about 350 mg of sodium, an ounce of feta about 320, three slices of bacon about 300 and five olives about 190, from the USDA’s values.
Test yourself
Our topping game puts two toppings side by side for ten rounds. Most people miss the ranch against the chicken, which come out within about 12 calories of each other. To see what your own toppings add, tap them into the builder with your dressing.
6 sources
- Gebhardt and Thomas, Nutritive Value of Foods, Home and Garden Bulletin 72, USDA Agricultural Research Service, 2002ars.usda.gov
- USDA Standard Reference, croutons, seasonednutritionvalue.org
- USDA Standard Reference, salad dressing, regular, caesarnutritionvalue.org
- USDA Standard Reference, salad dressing, regular, ranchnutritionvalue.org
- USDA Standard Reference, oil, salad or cooking, olivenutritionvalue.org
- Leidy et al., The role of protein in weight loss and maintenance, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2015pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
