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Some people order salads at a restaurant because they like it. Others do it because they want to eat healthy or lose weight. And healthy salads are so much tastier when a restaurant makes it, right?

Well, we all know or at least suspect, where that great taste in a restaurant salad is coming from. It’s those delicious morsels of deep-fried treats and pieces of richly prepared toppings and texture-makers lurking among the greens that are doing the trick. And to top it all off, is the ¼ cup to ½ cup of generously prepared, special dressing.

A basic ranch dressing contains 274 calories per two ounces (about four tablespoons). And that’s without any special additions and spikings that a restaurant would typically do. But even with this modest reckoning, that is almost 3 times the calories contained in the salad veggies themselves.

The result is a divine salad of course, but for all the good it is doing to your heart or waistline, you might as well have ordered the beef.

To minimize the calorie additions from dressings and still have a tasty salad, there is a proven method, known as the “Fork Method”. Here’s how you do it:

1) Begin by ordering the dressing on the side.

2) Take the fork, and dip only 1/3 of the tines in the dressing. Don’t go more or you’ll pick up too much. Don’t go less or you won’t taste anything.

3) Now load up the fork with your salad. Eat.

4) Enjoy the whole salad this way, by dipping the fork in dressing first.

5) Using the Fork Method, your total consumption of fatty salad dressings will not exceed 2 tablespoons max.

Now, that would be a healthy salad meal, wouldn’t it?

(***If you’re wondering why just ordering dressing on the side is not enough to ensure a healthy salad, it is because you don’t have the ability to toss. The plate or bowl the salad is coming in is precariously heaped. Tossing would mean making a mess on the table. So even if you’re pouring the dressing yourself, you’re unconsciously adding a lot more than you absolutely need to get the dressing flavor in each mouthful.)