When you’re trying to eat healthily, salad is your friend. Vegetables provide your body with many of the nutrients you need, and the addition of nuts or chickpeas ensures that your body doesn’t go without the necessary protein that it needs. However, the benefits of salad can be difficult to enjoy if you are eating it meal after meal. The taste will become blander and blander over time, which will often lead to you falling off the healthy eating wagon.

To avoid this, many of us season our salads (and other foods) with dressing, and ranch is chief amongst them. The problem is that store bought ranch dressings are often poor nutritionally, and many of them contain titanium dioxide – a compound commonly used in paint to brighten the color.

This vegan alternative maintains the same rich, creamy taste of any other ranch dressing without the danger of causing serious damage to your health.

Dangers of Titanium Dioxide

Titanium dioxide is the world’s most commonly used compound for the pigmentation of products. It is used in plastics, paint, and inks, as well as most surprisingly of all – in food! A recent study has concluded that titanium dioxide is a human carcinogen (cancer-causing agent). The research showed that consistent high-level exposure to it increases a person’s chances of respiratory tract cancer.

Studies of the compounds health risks have mostly been centered around inhalation rather than consumption, but early findings suggest that it is a product that we should be taking steps to avoid sooner rather than later. The evidence that inhalation of titanium dioxide can lead to cancer is enough to suggest that eating it isn’t the wisest thing for us to be doing.

Homemade Ranch Dressing Recipe

Serves: 2 full cups

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 5 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 cup raw cashews, soaked in filtered water for 2 hours and drained? (soaking is optional but recommended)
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• ?1/4 cup apple cider vinegar?
• 2 dates soaked in 1 1/2 cups of filtered water and then pitted
• ?1/2 cup date soak water (discard the rest of soak water or add it to a smoothie)?
• 2 – 4 large cloves garlic?
• 2 tablespoons red onion?
• 1 1/2 tablespoon Herbamare
• 1 tablespoon fresh continental parsley chopped finely
• ?1/2 teaspoon fresh dill chopped finely?
• 1 tablespoon green onions chopped finely

Instructions

1. Put all the ingredients (except for the herbs) and blend until smooth
2. Stir the herbs into the mix
3. Use between half a cup and a whole cup of water to thin the dressing to your preferred consistency
4. Enjoy!

Here are two more delicious dressing recipes to try out! Creamy Avocado Dressing and Turmeric & Garlic Yogurt Dressing.