A Spoonful of Soybean Oil in Salad May Boost its Nutritional Benefits: Study

If you are a salad lover, you would know how salad dressing plays an important role in making it extremely delightful and delectable to eat. It looks like oil has an added advantage of being one of the dressings here. According to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adding a spoonful of soybean oil as dressing may help you derive the optimal nutritional benefits from your vegetables. The findings reveal that eating a salad with added fat in the form of soybean oil promotes the absorption of seven different micronutrients, which promote human health that includes cancer prevention and eye sight preservation.

According to the researchers at Iowa State University in the US, these important micronutrients may include four carotenoids, which are alpha and beta-carotene, lutein and lycopene, two forms of vitamin E and vitamin K. The soybean oil also promoted the absorption of vitamin A that formed in the intestine from the alpha and beta carotene.

"The best way to explain it would be to say that adding twice the amount of salad dressing leads to twice the nutrient absorption," said Wendy White, Associate Professor at the varsity. The researchers also found out that the amount of oil added to the vegetables had a proportional relationship with the amount of nutrient absorption, which means, more oil more absorption.

Conversely, eating the same salad without the added oil may lessen the likelihood that the body will absorb the required nutrients. The study showed that the results may ease the guilt of countless dieters who worry about adding dressing to their favourite salads.

For the study, the team of researchers included college-age women who consumed salads with various levels of soybean oil. The results revealed that maximal nutrient absorption occurred at around 32 grams of oil that was the highest amount studied or slightly little more than two tablespoons.

With Inputs from IANS