How many calories are in my salad?

What your grade means

The letter is the average of six meters, the six jobs a meal does for your body. A bowl has to clear all six lines to get an A, so one miss caps it at B+, however good the rest is.

• A or A+. It's a meal. It fits your day, it's mostly real food, and it brings your protein, enough fiber and its share of the minerals and vitamins. Keep it in your rotation.
• B+ or B. One or two lines missed, and the meters show which. For a salad it's usually Energy (too light to be lunch), Processing (a bottled dressing that's a big share of the calories) or Muscle (no protein). The one change fixes the worst of them.
• C. A side dish trying to be a meal. Leaves do Nutrients and Glucose on their own, and the bowl is missing protein, fiber or calories. You'll be hungry by three.

Do it once with your usual bowl, measured. Pour your dressing into a tablespoon instead of guessing, and count the chicken by the palm. A lot of people find their "drizzle" is two or three tablespoons, and that the bowl they thought was lunch is a C. Then try the one change for a week and see if three o'clock feels different.

The six meters

These are the six systems Gyroscope grades every meal on, worked out here from a public food table so you can see the working. meals.guide's meal checker uses the same engine for any plate, and each meter below opens its page there. The app works its meters out its own way, so a bowl won't always get the same numbers in both.

1. EnergyIs it the right size for your day?
2. ProcessingIs it food, or a product made to be eaten fast?
3. MuscleDoes it bring enough protein?
4. HungerWill it hold you until the next meal?
5. NutrientsMinerals and vitamins for its calories?
6. GlucoseDoes it keep your blood sugar steady?

Each meter runs from 0 to 100 and has a line. The grade is their average, on the Gyroscope app's letter cutoffs (A+ over 96, A from 90, B+ over 88, B from 80, C+ over 76, C from 50). For a 170 lb person eating 2,000 calories a day over three meals, the lines are these:

One rule for salads: the color needs fat

The orange and red in carrots, tomatoes and leaves (the carotenoids your body turns into vitamin A) only get into your blood dissolved in fat. When 7 people at Iowa State ate a salad with fat-free dressing, almost none reached their blood. So on this site, the vitamin A from vegetables counts toward Nutrients in proportion to the fat in the bowl, in full from 8 g, a little over half a tablespoon of oil. In a 2017 trial in 12 women, beta-carotene rose in a straight line from 0 to 8 g of oil. The fat can come from anything in the bowl, an egg, cheese, avocado or the dressing. It's the one rule meals.guide's plates don't have, and it's why a spoon of olive oil can lift a salad's grade where fat-free dressing can't.

Salt sits beside the grade

Sodium isn't one of the six meters, in the app or here, so it never moves the letter. The builder shows it under the meters against a meal's share of the 2,300 mg Daily Value, about 767 mg over three meals. Cheese, bacon, croutons, olives and bottled dressing carry most of a salad's. Canned beans do too: a cup of canned kidney beans in the USDA table has 873 mg, against 2 mg for black beans cooked without salt.

A salad before a meal isn't graded. Its job is to be big and light, and the Energy, Muscle and Hunger meters would fail a good side salad for the wrong reason. It gets the starter readout instead, against the Penn State first-course salads.

The one change tries every small edit a salad allows: add a palm of chicken, a can of tuna or two eggs when you're under your protein line, half a cup of chickpeas, beans, corn or quinoa, a tablespoon of olive oil when the bowl has no dressing with fat in it, swap a creamy, bottled or fat-free dressing for olive oil with vinegar or croutons for chickpeas, halve the dressing, cheese or croutons, or leave off the crunchy extras. It keeps the one that lifts the score most, and it fixes what's in the bowl before it adds to it.

The site's bowl, and three more, worked

A+

The site's bowl

3 cups romaine, 1 palm chicken breast, ½ cup chickpeas, 1 tomato, ½ cup cucumber, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp vinegar

450 calories, 39 g protein, 11.1 g fiber, dressing 27%, sodium 90 mg

• Energylight450 cal
• Processingwhole100% whole food
• Musclehigh39 g protein
• Hungerfilling11.1 g fiber, 0.8 cal a gram
• Nutrientsdense3½ cups of plants
• Glucosesteady1 g fast carbs

The one changeNone. It clears all six.

B

Salad with chicken and 2 tbsp of ranch

3 cups romaine, 1 palm chicken breast, 1 tomato, ½ cup cucumber, 2 tbsp ranch dressing

330 calories, 32 g protein, 4.8 g fiber, dressing 39%, sodium 360 mg

• Energysmall330 cal
• Processingmixed61% whole food
• Musclehigh32 g protein
• Hungerfilling4.8 g fiber, 0.7 cal a gram
• Nutrientsdense3 cups of plants
• Glucosesteady2 g fast carbs

The one changeSwap the ranch for a tablespoon of olive oil with vinegar and it's B+

C

Caesar with 3 tbsp of dressing, croutons and parmesan

3 cups romaine, 3 tbsp caesar dressing, 1 oz croutons, 2 tbsp parmesan

440 calories, 10 g protein, 4.4 g fiber, dressing 55%, sodium 1080 mg

• Energylight440 cal
• Processingprocessed16% whole food
• Musclevery low10 g protein
• Hungerlight4.4 g fiber, 1.8 cal a gram
• Nutrientsdense1½ cups of plants
• Glucosesteady17 g fast carbs

The one changeAdd a palm of chicken breast and it's B

C

Leaves only, with a tablespoon of Italian

4 cups romaine, ½ cup carrots, 1 cup cucumber, 1 tbsp italian dressing, bottled

140 calories, 6 g protein, 6.5 g fiber, dressing 50%, sodium 150 mg

• Energysmall140 cal
• Processingmixed50% whole food
• Musclevery low6 g protein
• Hungerlight6.5 g fiber, 0.3 cal a gram
• Nutrientsdense3½ cups of plants
• Glucosesteady1 g fast carbs

The one changeAdd a palm of chicken breast and it's B

A burger on whole wheat beats a side salad with ranch on these meters, for the same reasons. meals.guide runs the matchup and six more meals that grade the opposite of what you'd guess.

Where the numbers come from

Food values are from the USDA's Nutritive Value of Foods (Home and Garden Bulletin 72), minerals and vitamins included, the same rows meals.guide uses, so a food is the same number on both sites. Caesar and ranch dressing are USDA Standard Reference rows. Daily Values are the FDA's label values: calcium 1,300 mg, potassium 4,700 mg, iron 18 mg, vitamin A 900 mcg, vitamin C 90 mg. The bulletin has no column for added sugar, so bottled dressings count all their sugar and whole foods none. Hand measures follow the CDC: a palm is 3 oz of meat or fish, a cupped hand is an ounce of nuts.

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