Review: Walden Farms French Salad Dressing

When I was growing up, I had an obsession with French dressing (and also ketchup).  When I wasn't putting ketchup on something, the chances were pretty good that I was using French dressing instead.  I even came up with a food creation that I found delicious at the time, but am now repulsed by the fact that I used to eat it.  This concoction was a slice of white bread topped with a slice of American cheese (unmelted) and then doused with a healthy amount of french dressing or Catalina dressing.  For some reason, I found this delicious and can't figure out why.  Anyway, I don't like French dressing as much now as I did then, but I still like it and that leads to this review of Walden Farms' attempted at French Salad Dressing.  I picked up this sugar and calorie free twelve ounce bottle from VitaCost.com (via Amazon.com) for $3.64.

As you can see, this visually looks like French dressing with its orange/red hue.  Smell wise, it also smelled like French dressing with a slight acidic aftertaste.  Being that I've reviewed countless Walden Farms products, I'm accustomed to that acidic smell (and taste), so it doesn't bother me all that much since I'm used to it.  If it bothers you, the smell alone of this one may scare you away. The dressing itself is quite runny (again, not surprising from a Walden Farms product) since it is primarily made up of triple filtered water and assorted aged vinegars and dried herbs, per the label.  Outside of that, there's not much else to say here.

The smell of this one pretty much described the taste of this one too.  It tasted like French dressing with a slight acidic aftertaste.  The acid taste wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that you are definitely going to notice it and perhaps be put off by it if you don't like that kind of thing.  Again, I'm used to this, so it didn't bother me all that much.  Obviously since this is so runny, you are going to miss the thick characteristic of your garden variety French dressing, so if you really need that in a dressing, stay away from this one.

Buy It or Fly By It?  As with all Walden Farms products, it really depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice in order to save calories.  In most cases, I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of taste and texture in order to save calories, so I'll give this a BUY IT rating.  It's not a horrible product like some of these dressings and its enough like French dressing for me to not be repulsed by it and despite the fact that I miss the ordinary thick texture of French dressing, the taste of this is approximate enough for me to want to buy it and use it again just to change up my salad dressings a bit.

BUY IT!!