A salad is part of most Western meals. A salad is a mixture of different food served as a dish. Salads can be made of vegetables, fruits, meats, or a combination of food kinds. A salad is usually served with a dressing or sauce and occasionally sprinkled with garnishing such as nuts, croutons, or cheese.

A salad is often served as an appetizer before a larger meal although many people serve salads after the main course before dessert. The word salad comes from salade of the French language. In turn, salade comes from the Latin word salata which means “salty.”

There are many types of salad, green salad being the most well known. It also has other names such as garden salad. Basically, it is built on a base of leaf vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, or rocket. Its leaves are cut or torn into bite-sized pieces and mixed with other vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, mushrooms, onions, spring onions, red onions, carrots, and radishes. It is sometimes mixed with other ingredients such as pasta, olives, potatoes, beans, croutons, cheeses, or meat.

Usually, salad is accompanied by a dressing. Traditionally, salad dressings in southern Europe are made out of oil and vinegar, aptly called vinaigrettes. These oils may include olive oil, corn oil, soybean oil, or safflower oil.

In eastern Europe, mayonnaise is used as salad dressing. Denmark uses dressings made out of crème fraiche. Western and Chinese dressings are based on mayonnaise and thick oil.

There are other kinds of salads. More common ones include fruit salad, potato salad, macaroni salad, chicken salad, coleslaw, and Greek salad. Other countries have their own versions of salad. For example, there’s the Som tam of Thailand or the Goi ngo sen of Vietnam.

Most salads are eaten raw. Because of that, there is a danger in eating salads—the same danger encountered when eating raw food.

For example, raw fruit and vegetables are sprayed with man-made chemicals to keep away parasites. Many of these pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides are toxic when ingested by human beings.

Bacteria and other organisms from the ground can also cause harm. This is especially true of the ingredients are not washed well. Eggs from parasites and bacteria residing in offal can be transmitted to plant leaves and can stay there for quite a while. They can cause serious damage to a person’s digestive track.  

Toxic chemicals and bacteria are not the only dangers that we would face when eating salads. There are fresh and natural poisons or chemicals that are manufactured by plants and vegetables to stay alive, protect themselves, and reproduce their kind.

Many plants produce nutrition blockers. These are chemicals that bind with vitamins and minerals in the plants. These blockers prevent your body from absorbing vitamins and minerals.

Another danger is oxalic acid. Oxalic acid in raw vegetables such as spinach, beet, Swiss chard, rhubarb and cauliflower has insoluble mineral salts such as calcium and iron. This chemical renders uncooked vegetables non-nutritious. It can even be fatal; eating raw rhubarb can actually kill a person.

Another danger is antithiamine. These bind with vitamin B and stops the body from absorbing it. Antithiamines are found in raw red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, beets, and raw egg.

Raw kidney beans, alfalfa, and some pea species can cause liver diseases and can block the absorption of vitamin E.

Cyanogens, which are found in Lima beans, unripe millet, young bamboo shoots, cassasva, manioc, and tapioca can cause cancer.

However, it is quite easy to get rid of these natural poisons. Since they are only toxic or non-nutritious in their raw state, then light cooking slightly will get neutralize them.