Written by Caitlin Johnson, RD – Registered Dietitian Contributor

If your salad isn’t making your mouth water, you’re doing it wrong. Salads don’t fail because they’re vegan or veggie-forward. They fail because the dressing isn’t good enough.

Most vegan dressings are either aggressively tangy or oddly forgettable. Neither one is pulling you toward a bowl of greens, and a lackluster vegan dressing never will.

Meanwhile, no one is out here eating dry greens thinking, “this is exactly what I was craving.” We don’t need less of a reason to eat salad — we need more. Something that makes us scoot a little closer to the table.

You’ve felt the moments where the gravitational pull of a food is unavoidable, something pulling you into orbit despite your best efforts to resist. The kind of moment where you see someone else eating a meal and think, I want that exact experience.

Is ’90s Pop Culture Shaping Our Vegan Dressing Options?

It should be.

We all want a moment like the diner scene in When Harry Met Sally — where it’s not just about the food, but the reaction to it. The one where the woman leans over to the waitress and says she’ll have whatever that lady ordered. That’s what we’re actually chasing.

And that’s Marketing 101. Wear this, look like that. Drive this, feel like that. Eat this, become that version of yourself. I think that’s where most vegan marketing gets it wrong.

There was a time when vegan eating was positioned almost entirely around aspiration. The people promoting it were glowing — clear skin, lean, and it all seemed so effortless.

In the early days, when eating vegan became a popular niche thing, vegan couples were opening restaurants and writing cookbooks in most major cities. They were generally thin, with vibrant skin, and attractive. You honestly didn’t care that their juice-bar drink gave you an instant headache; you wanted your skin to look like theirs. And if the food didn’t quite deliver? You convinced yourself it would eventually.

I remember going to a super hip restaurant in San Francisco years ago called Gracias Madre. It was one of those places that promised you didn’t need dairy or meat — because the food would make you feel like you were eating those things anyway. I loved the concept.

A plant-based, Hispanic-inspired menu rooted in the idea of honoring “mother earth.” And at that point in my life, I was deep in it: studying dietetics (aka nutrition), experimenting with vegan eating, trying everything.

I ate my fair share of what I can only describe as vegan cardboard crackers, dips that were aggressively garlicky, and beet juice that turned my urine questionable colors.

I even had a raw-vegan phase. Which, if you know, you know… it’s a level of commitment that borders on performance art. Somewhere between “I’m exploring my health” and “I’m one step away from identifying as a fruitarian.” You know the reference — that scene from Notting Hill where Hugh Grant’s dinner date only eats fruit that has already fallen from a tree. Extreme! Do people actually do that?

Why Most Vegan Dressings Don’t Work — and Why Bitchin’ Sauce Is the Solution

The part most people won’t say out loud is that most vegan dressings aren’t bad… they just aren’t good enough.

They’re once again built around what they’re not. No dairy, no eggs, no honey — basically free of all evils. It’s giving “we were on a break” energy from Friends. Technically defensible, but still not satisfying.

What do we get in many of these dressings? Something too thin to coat a salad, as if it ghosted you halfway through the meal. Too acidic, reminiscent of the emotional toxicity of Beverly Hills, 90210. Maybe even as forgettable as the Tamagotchi none of us ever remembered to feed.

A good salad dressing has more to do than just deliver flavor. It needs to be cohesive, totally satisfying, and have a texture that matches the character of the meal. We don’t want drama just for the sake of comic relief — that’s where the writers did Ross Geller wrong in the last few seasons of Friends.

The dressing needs to strike a balance: enough richness, enough umami, enough salt, enough acid, enough creaminess. Or, if you want the long version, go read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. (A solid purchase if you want to improve your culinary skills, and a fun read too.)

That’s exactly why Bitchin’ Sauce doubles as a salad dressing so easily. The perfect balance is already built in. Provide some greens, and all you have to do is let it do its thing.

Think Southwestern BBQ Chicken Salad with our Cilantro Chili flavor — bold enough to carry the whole bowl.

Salad Ideas That Actually Make You Want Salad (Starring Bitchin’ Sauce)

Some of these are vegan, some vegetarian, and some have meat. Adjust as needed for your dietary preferences. Here’s where the right vegan dressing turns a so-so bowl into something you actually reach for:

Now — tell me what you want, what you really, really want? The Spice Girls didn’t know it, but they were prophesying this totally Bitchin’ vegan dressing into reality.

And with that, we’re saying bye, bye, bye to sad salads.

Are you tired of my unapologetic ’90s pop culture references yet? No? Great. Let’s move on.

So What Does This Actually Mean for You?

At the end of the day, this isn’t really about vegan dressing. It’s about behavior — the gap between what you intend to eat and what you actually eat when you’re hungry, busy, or just not in the mood to think too hard.

As a dietitian, I’m familiar with this space, because it’s where most “healthy eating” advice falls flat on its face. It assumes you’re making decisions in a vacuum — not a real vacuum, but one without variables. No children screaming, no unexpected sick days, no busy weekends where you didn’t make it to the second grocery store. It assumes you’re in a calm, well-lit kitchen with unlimited time and motivation. But real life?

Real life is you standing in front of the fridge, half distracted and starving. This isn’t your best moment, or your most strategic one. Definitely not the version of you who read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and took notes.

It’s more like a scene out of Friends, where you open and close the fridge like something new will appear if you just give it a minute. And somehow, this is the exact moment diet culture expects you to make the “right choice.”

This isn’t when most of us shine — which is exactly why healthy, easy options matter. So when you’re distracted, hungry, and low on patience, you don’t have to rely on sheer self-discipline.

Instead, you rely on what you already set up for yourself. Or, if we’re being honest, you rely on your inner Monica Geller — the Type A roommate who keeps the kitchen stocked, the fridge organized, and (in this version of reality) fully endorses Bitchin’ Sauce.

You’re really doing life right if you have a Type A roommate who’ll do this for you — especially for free.

Since we’ve been feeling this, let’s finish with:

Why Bitchin’ Sauce Feels Like a ’90s Pop Culture Moment

If you really think about it, Bitchin’ Sauce is kind of a perfect product of ’90s pop culture. Not because it existed back then, but because the creators of Bitchin’ Sauce came up in that generation.

A decade trying to find its own iconic footing after the ’80s and all that big hair and spandex. How did the ’90s do it?

• They didn’t try too hard (and somehow that’s the entire point). The best things in the ’90s didn’t feel overproduced. They felt effortless, like a perfectly oversized blazer and a messy bun. Bitchin’ Sauce has that same energy. It’s not SCREAMING “health food.” It’s not trying to convince you of anything. It shows up, and it hits.

• It’s the Cool Girl of your fridge. Every ’90s movie and show had that girl — Joey Potter, low-maintenance yet magnetic, naturally beautiful, no makeup required.

• It’s bold without apologizing. Think strong flavors, opinions, and identities. I mean, JNCO pants and black choker necklaces? Bitchin’ Sauce leans in. It doesn’t water itself down to be more acceptable.

• It has strong replay value. The songs you loved in the ’90s? You played them on repeat, and it was the first time that was easy. CDs saved you from rewinding actual tape. Bitchin’ Sauce has you begging to rewind — and now we live in the age of grocery delivery and DoorDash, where you actually can get more without leaving home.

The ’90s didn’t win because everything was perfect. They won because they made you feel something. They made things fun. Memorable. Worth coming back to. And that’s the whole point: you need something you actually want to eat. If your salad finally feels like something worth hitting repeat — well, that’s totally Bitchin’.