by Andrew English

Created on: January 13, 2009   Last Updated: January 28, 2009

It is no secret that many Americans are battling to lose weight. As testament to this, a great deal of "get-thin-quick" promises invade every form of modern advertising media: radio, TV, and the Internet. Despite the money invested in advertising these products few, if any, of them can rival the effectiveness of eating right.

Eating a simple salad is a huge step in the right direction for any healthy diet. Unfortunately for most people, a simple salad does not compete very well in a world of tasty cheese and sugar based foods. However, some ingenious foodies came to our rescue with the invention of salad dressing. But then we encounter another "catch 22." While a salad dressing may increase the palatability of those healthy garden greens, it also increases the fat and the calories. So even if you are happily munching away on salad for every meal, if it is covered in blue cheese dressing do not expect to see a significant weight reduction.

Wish-Bone recently released a line of new salad dressings aimed at addressing the problem of high calorie and fat content in traditional dressings. The Salad Spritzer s line contains nine dressings ranging from Ranch to Balsamic Vinaigrette. These spritzers are low calorie dressings with no fat or cholesterol (even the Ranch). The real question is: were they able to leave the great taste of other unhealthy dressings in place?

Fortunately for those of us who want to eat healthy, but cannot fall in love with the taste of raw broccoli, the answer is yes. All of the Salad Spritzers enhance the tastiness of a simple garden salad - in the author's opinion. However, some are certainly better than others. For instance, the Balsamic Breeze Vinaigrette and the Italian Vinaigrette are very close to their non-Spritzer counterparts; while the Ranch and Honey Mustard Buzz variations were a bit off the mark.

This is probably due to the fact that cream-based dressings - such as Ranch and Honey Mustards - get most of their pleasant taste from their fat content. So once we remove all the fat, it becomes a big challenge to make an authentic Ranch tasting dressing. That being said, both the creamier Spritzers were still enjoyable on salad and make a bowl full of garden harvest much easier to swallow.

Since the Spritzers taste so close to the originals, one might think that the ingredients list paints a pretty nasty picture. Surely Wishbone had to use a plethora of scary chemicals to simulate the tastes that we love. Surprisingly, the back of the bottle is a short read. They do contain high fructose corn syrup, but that is a small trade-off to get rid of all the calories and fat.

One beneficial byproduct of the Spritzer product is the dressing delivery system. The bottle is actually a spray bottle, and the suggested serving size is given in number of sprays (which is ten). This has the added benefit of allowing the diner to accurately measure how much dressing they are using. With normal pour bottles, people often unknowingly apply significantly more dressing than is suggested (and way more than is healthy).

I plan on including the Spritzers in my salad dressing rotation, but I do not plan on making a full conversion yet. It might take a few more weeks to tear me away from some of my traditional favorite dressings; however, it is possible. Wishbone has a great product with these Spritzers and I expect them to be around for some time to come.

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