Trader Joe’s BBQ & Black Pepper Toscano Chopped Salad Kit may sound delicious, but it’s not particularly healthy — unfortunately! Sure, this salad tastes great. Who doesn’t like a nice thick BBQ-flavored dressing? That same dressing, though, is the very ingredient that makes this a little bit worse for you than the next product down the list (spoiler alert!), the Caesar salad.
Per the Trader Joe’s nutrition facts, the Toscano Chopped Salad Kit contains 3 grams of saturated fats in each serving, giving about 27 calories from fats. According to the AHA, only 6% of your daily calories should come from saturated fats (that means about 120-150 calories in total), otherwise you could risk developing heart disease down the line. The salad kit also contains 200 milligrams of sodium, another ingredient that may lead to eventual heart problems in excessive quantities.
The biggest problem with the Toscano chopped salad kit, though, is the fact that the dressing is chock full of sugar. A single serving of salad and dressing contains a whopping 8 grams of sugar, and the AHA recommends that you consume no more than approximately 30 grams of sugar per day. This means that one portion of salad represents almost 33% of your daily limit, and if you go back for seconds, that number could be even higher. To avoid unhealthy ingredients, like sodium, saturated fats, and sugar, you might want to choose a healthier salad off this list.