May Is National Salad Month, Here’s How We Like Ours

If you're thinking about reining in your diet before summer, this could be the nudge you need:  May is National Salad Month.   To celebrate the occasion my wife and I enjoyed a delicious fresh garden salad with mixed greens, peppers, hot house tomatoes and red onions. We topped it off with blackened chicken thighs that we cooked in the air-fryer.

When people used to think of having a salad it usually was as an appetizer before the main course. It was probably a basic salad with some sort of salad dressing the restaurant offered. Now salads are the main course and come in hundreds of different kinds of variety.
Also, when you walk through the grocery store and peruse the produce section you can choose from dozens of different greens and lettuce types. That’s not to mention the huge variety of other vegetables that you can have in your salad. When it comes to the aforementioned salad dressings, you can spend all day choosing what you want to top it with.

There are tons of restaurants that feature salads of all types. There’s Cava, Sweet Grrens, Sweet Tomato and even Mexican style salads from Chipotle and Qdoba.
You can order a wedge salad at any decent restaurant and add whatever proteins you prefer.

A new poll asked people for the STRANGEST things they like to put in their salads, and people get REAL creative.  The answers include:  Banana, peanut butter, peppermint, popcorn, marshmallows, meatballs, beef jerky, and hotdogs.

Overall, the #1 salad topping is:  Cheese, followed by tomatoes . . . bacon . . . croutons . . . and cucumbers.  (Remember:  Salads are not automatically healthy.  It depends on what you put in them.)

The most popular salad dressing is Ranch, followed by Italian and Caesar.

As for the actual GREENS, the most popular base is:  Romaine, followed by iceberg lettuce . . . spinach . . . spring mix . . . and crunchy green lettuce.

And if you're just not feeling salads AT ALL, there's this:  May is also National Hamburger Month. 

(OnePoll)

The folks at Business Insider have published these Five Healthy Habits Take Only 5 Minutes or Less and could Add Years to Your life. Who doesn't want to do that? Especially knowing that these can all be done in a short period of time and pay dividends for years to come.

An expert on longevity listed some quick daily habits that could add years to your life:  Habit stacking . . . micro-meditations . . . five-minute workouts . . . and taking a few minutes to check in on people you care about.

It almost sounds too good to be true, but this is really exciting news. You can do these simple things easily and fit them into your daily routine. How about all the long grueling workouts that we thought were necessary to achieve a better longevity? We are told that pain was gain and no sweat meant no good. Finding five minutes in your day to add these routines to your day could extend your lifespan by years.

The good news is, these 5 Healthy Habits that only take 5 minutes or less that could add years to your life are not just about physical activities. There's more to living a long life than just working out. You have to work on yourself in other ways to achieve these goals.

Part of the goal of living a longer life is to share with others. This doesn't mean you have to be married (although studies suggest that happy couples live longer than then their single friends on average), you can live a long healthy life as a happy single person too. What matters is you have a good social network of friends, family and co-workers. Being alone and or lonely is one of the markers for a  shorter lifespan. So, getting out and together with people is a very important and crucial part of extending your lifespan, and it's will make living longer more fun and worth living.

Starting a new habit is hard. But adding a new habit onto an existing one is easier. You could add mindfulness to your morning coffee routine, or practice gratitude as you brush your teeth.

 Checking in with yourself doesn't need to take long.  A simple technique is focusing on your breath as you inhale for a count of four . . . hold for a count of seven . . . and exhale for a count of eight.

Research shows even short bursts of regular exercise can help keep you young.  Take a break from work and do some squats or wall sits, or take a brisk walk.  It can improve your whole day.

Instead of scrolling aimlessly at night, reach out to a few people you care about.  Connecting with friends can raise your levels of the "feel-good" hormone oxytocin, which has anti-inflammatory effects.

Having a sense of purpose is linked to a longer life.  So spend a few minutes a day thinking about what your passions are.  It can "not only add more years to your life, but more life to your years."