The word Salad comes from everyone’s favorite part of the salad—the dressing.

Let me take you back to Roman Times, let’s just say at the end of Roman times
because that motherfucker lasted from the founding of the city of Rome in the
8th century BCE to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century
CE so let’s just say 300-400 CE. Yes, it was the ancient Romans and Greeks who
loved raw vegetables eaten with a concoction of oil, vinegar and brine or salt—
they called the dish SALATA which translates to SALTED THINGS (sal meaning salt)

So etymologically, the key ingredient of salad or that which makes salad, is

technically the dressing and I am on board with that!

As time progressed, salads became more complex. Recipes varied according to

time and place. Dinner salads were very popular during the renaissance period.
Composed salads, assembled with layers of ingredients (basically today’s chef
salad) were popular in the 18th century and were called Salmagundi.

The medical practitioners Hippocrates and Galen belived that raw vegetables
easily slipped through the system and did not create obstructions for what
followed, therefore they should be served first. Others reported that the vinegar
in the dressing destroyed the taste of the wine, therefore they should be served
last. This debate has continued ever since which is why here in the US, we eat
salad first and salad in France is traditionally is served as the final course.

In the 1700s, the first salad cookbook in the English language was written and
Called Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets (acetaria being an old word for salad
greens), it instructed that only the freshest leaves straight from the garden should
be used. They should be 'sprinkled', not soaked, in fresh water, drained in a
colander, and then they should be swung"all together gently in clean, coarse
napkin." They should be dressed with oil of a pallid olive green . . .such as native
Lucca olives afford," with vinegar of the best quality infused with flowers and
herbs, and with the finest crystals of sea salt. The author also gave detailed
instructions for cultivating thirty five different greens: among them, four varieties
of romaine lettuce, spinach, nasturtiums for their leaves and for their flowers, a
variety of herbs to be used with discretion, cresses, sorrel, spinach, endive,
chicory, celery, fennel, radish, and today's favorites, mache and arugula. 
So, I’m sure we’re going to hear about a ton of gross salads but I would be remiss
if I didn’t discuss possibly the most famous of salads—Naama? Do you know
what that would be? The Cesar salad Most historians believe that Caesar salad
honors restaurateur Caesar Cardini (1896-1956), who invented it in Tijuana,
Mexico in 1924 on the Fourth of July weekend.  It is said that on this busy
weekend, Cardini was running low on food and he put together a salad for his
guests from what was left over in the kitchen.  His original recipe included
romaine, garlic, croutons, and Parmesan cheese, boiled eggs, olive oil and
Worcestershire sauce.  The original salad was prepared at tableside.  When the
salad dressing was ready, the romaine leaves were coated with the dressing and
placed stem side out, in a circle and served on a flat dinner plate, so that the salad
could be eaten with the fingers. Caesar was said to be staunchly against the
inclusion of anchovies in this mixture, contending that the Worcestershire sauce
was what actually provided that faint fishy flavor.  He also decreed that only
Italian olive oil and imported Parmesan cheese be used in the dressing.

OK, back to the problem with salad: Now, we discussed salads a little bit in our
Jell-o episode and if you’ll remember, salad had a huge impact on Jell-o. There
was this idea in the late 19th century early 20th that salad was messy as it could be
tossed everywhere and it was apparently such a fucking issue that in the 1950s
the creation of perfection salad, showed that you could finally contain your unruly
salad by placing it in aspic—a salad loaf if you will and this is where we find that
salad, like jell-o, is shorthand for all things feminine and yet another example of
how the patriarchy has its greasy little fingers on everything, ESPECIALLY our diet
as women.

Today and dating back to I guess the 1800s when men realized they could control
women by food, the term salad really connotates, SACRIFICE. I cannot tell you
how many times I’ve heard women specifically say, oh I’m going to be good and
have a salad or, the even more popular—I’ll just have a salad, indicating that they
could enjoy a steak but that they are somehow controlling themselves and rather
than actually filling themselves, they will show the ultimate restraint and have a
salad. Salad has become shorthand for healthy eating and weight loss but it’s also
shorthand for totally joyless eating. As Julie Beck says in her Atlantic Article, The
Sad Ballad of Salad, “When someone orders a salad at lunch, it’s presented as the
decision of a martyr giving up their happiness to the waiter: ‘I’ll just have the
salad.’” It’s the “just” that defines the ethos of the salad, positions it as less than
other things you might have eaten. “Just” is a word of abstention, and salad the
food of abstainers. And because it’s healthy, dainty, diet-y, light, less-than, the
salad has always been associated with women.

So now let’s pivot again to the time when all food died, the 1950s, post-war,
people gaining back their taste buds. Salad basically moved from just vegetables
to a generally feminine dainty food. Now, some of the things categorized as
“salad” at that time actually weren’t dainty or healthy at all, like  “egg yolks
mashed with mayonnaise, formed into balls, and rolled in cottage cheese,” or Jell-
O salads. But their actual composition didn’t matter so much as their label as
salad. As Laura Shapiro writes in her book, Perfection Salad: “Despite the often
hefty ingredients that were assembled in its name, the salad course never lost its
original image as a fragile, leafy interlude that was something of a nutritional frill.
… Salads were perceived as ladies’ food, reflecting the image of frailty attached to
the women who made them.”

So even today, salads are shorthand for dieting. And women are supposed to
fucking LOOOOVE salad. I think a few years ago someone did a whole article on
these Getty stock photos of women laughing alone and eating salad and it’s so
true. It’s like yaaay! I get to deprive myself at work, alone, on the treadmill. This
unseasoned collection of iceberg lettuce and mealy tomatoes grown in Arkansas
fulfills me to no end!

Now, I do want to add this in because this is a subject near and dear to my heart.
There has been a cultural pushback on this idea and there’s this whole, idea of
cool women eat burgers and fries. Of course, when we see photos of these
women, they are always blond and totally emaciated and people are cheering
them on. You never see women of size being congratulated for eating a burger so
you come out with this idea that if you are thin, you may partake in the happiness
of eating but fatties, STICK TO YO SALADS!!!!!

And here’s the craziest thing of all. Have you ever been on a road trip and gone
to the MacDonalds and thought, oh I want to be healthy and you order the salad?
Have you noticed that the salad often has more calories in it than the big mac?.
Now, nutrition is about more than calories, absolutely but you might as well just
eat the fucking burger because it’s literally the same in terms of the garbage scale
for your body as eating a fast food sanctioned salad.
Now, most recently, there has been a wave of salad restaurants and people trying
to bring honor back to the salad—restore it to its former I guess ancient greek
glamour. And salad-only lunch restaurants have become very successful in recent
years by offering salads with tons of ingredients, including meat and cheese and
grains, which make them feel more substantive and meal-like.