Sauce and Dressing Calories Add Up

You might think that those seemingly harmless salad dressings, mayonnaise and other creamy sandwich spreads, and sauces that we drench our meats in like bbq sauce are relatively harmless as far as calories go, but you’d be very wrong. 

Unfortunately, savory sauces that really dress dishes up, especially if they are creamy or thick in nature, are usually havens for hidden calories that ultimately add a ton more calories to your bottom line at the end of the day, and don’t even add anything to fill you up, which is a double whammy.  Yes, many sauces and dressings are essentially like soda – empty calories! 

They may even increase your appetite as opposed to what our goal is to eat foods that naturally suppress our appetite and make us feel satiated.  Take one of my favorites, and admitted weakness – BBQ sauces.  BBQ sauce is laden in sugar, with a high sugar count and carb count to begin with, especially if it is a sweeter variety that adds honey.  So, essentially by adding this sauce to your meat, you are ensuring that you’ll be ravenous in a few hours, if that.

Couple that with another favorite and admitted weakness of mine, which is coleslaw, and you’ve got a three alarm fire on your hands when it comes to your appetite in the next hour or two.  We just had BBQ with sauce and also with coleslaw (this really is a delectable combo), but since the coleslaw was laden in creamy sweet, tangy sauce also, we were starving in about two hours, to the point of shaking.

Lesson here is that sauces are to be only eaten when they are considered a treat and you know you are eating badly.  It’s ok to eat badly once in while, just don’t make it a habit.  And, if you can, cut back on the dressings and sauces even when you do eat bad, and opt for more of a vinegar based sauce, something that’s not as creamy and that satiates rather than accelerates the blood sugar levels and appetite, acting as a natural appetite suppressant so you don’t over do it again in the very near future. 

If we eat the right foods, it actually makes our blood sugar regulate, much like the natural compounds in products like hoodia, which work by way of regulating blood sugar, one of the key components in regulating the appetite, and even staving off excessive thirst – one of the hallmarks of diabetics (excessive thirst is a part of diabetes).