The Potential Safety Reason You Might Want To Avoid Ordering Salad At Restaurants

With all its bright colors, filling proteins, and nutritional value, there's a lot that hearty salad bowls have to offer. Whether you prefer a bed of crunchy kale or spicy arugula, ordering a bowl of leafy greens is certainly a healthy choice, but it's not always the safest. Cooking food over high heat kills off bacteria and germs, but most salads don't come hot. In fact, most come with numerous raw ingredients. Because these additions aren't cooked, harmful germs can hang on and potentially pose a risk to consumers.

Those microscopic pests could come from anywhere, from the field where the greens were grown to the hands of the chef who prepped your meal. So, if a salad's ingredients haven't been properly vetted or washed, you're much more likely to get sick than if you were to order a warm bowl of pasta or soup. This is true for ingredients the restaurant chops itself, but you're at an even bigger risk if the establishment opts for pre-cut fruits and veggies. Some restaurants order these for the sake of convenience, but because there's no way to tell how safely those ingredients were prepared, you never know what you're getting. Even if the restaurant orders from a reputable supplier, the risk of contamination is never zero.

For all the leafy-green lovers out there, don't panic. We're not telling you to avoid salad at all costs. Studies vary, and while we know raw salads have the potential to harbor bacteria, only a very small percentage end up causing us harm. So, when it comes to ordering salad, approach the choice with caution and be aware of the risks. Restaurants have guidelines in place to help prevent food-borne illness, but accidents happen. Even if you thoroughly wash every ingredient in a salad, it's impossible to eliminate every microscopic thing.

If you were to get sick from greens, the most common bacteria found on fruits and vegetables include E. coli, salmonella, listeria, and norovirus. The side effects of ingesting these typically include things like nausea, fever, muscle pain, and cramps, and the symptoms usually pass after a few days. If you're wary of ordering a salad, other healthy options (with potentially less risk) include warm rice bowls, savory soups, and grilled wraps. (Alternatively, you can always see if a menu offers hot salads like grilled romaine.) These will be just as nutritious but come cooked, so most of the bacteria will be eliminated.