Who doesn't love salad dressing? It can make just about any meal more exciting with a splash of flavor. If your household is like ours, each of us has our favorites. We are a house divided with my husband favoring French, and I enjoy dipping just about anything into ranch dressing. My newest obsession is Caesar. I love to add a tablespoon of it to my lunches, which are usually some combination of veggies with quinoa or vegetable pasta. Caesar adds just the right amount of tang without overpowering all of the whole food goodness.

The problem is, most salad dressing is full of transfats from canola, corn oil, sunflower oil, soy oil, cottonseed oil, or the catch-all "vegetable oil." 1 Dr. Catherine Shanahan of Deep Nutrition even calls these ingredients the "silent killers." What is worse, the fat-free versions can contribute to high blood pressure caused by the massive amounts of sodium per spoon full. Perhaps the most toxic of all is high fructose corn syrup, which is harmful to your body.

What's great about this problem is that there is an easy solution! Out of all the healthy things you can venture to make, salad dressing might be the easiest and can be mastered even by those who do not like to cook or spend time in the kitchen. You really can make delicious and even nutritious dressings with less than a hand full of ingredients. What's even better is that your investment in those ingredients will overlap with different recipes. I can imagine a day when the norm is to make your dressings from scratch at home once everyone realizes just how easy it is and harmfulness of the alternative. I hope that it becomes vogue to make your dressings from scratch at home because our bodies could use the break from processed foods. It could be a world where your host at a dinner party also explains how they made the dressing and not only the main course.

You can store your dressing for up to 5 days in the refrigerator. I prefer to keep my sauces in mason jars or milk jars and avoid storing them in plastic. If you plan to make homemade salad dressings regularly, Amazon sells packs of six jars for less than $20. They really are useful for keeping all of your flavors on hand.