If you’re a fan of food on Instagram (and who isn’t) you will be familiar with the trend of bowl food: gorgeously arranged, colorful meals – usually including avocado, often including kale – promoted as the latest in health-giving goodness.

Poké places, raw food cafes and salad bars let you happily create a beautiful bowl, brimming with healthy-looking goodies. Or you can throw together your own abundance-style salad bowl – they’re a great way to make leftover bits and pieces feel special, and they’re also excellent for getting a good range of vegetables into a lunch meal. Build it right, and a salad bowl meal can be a hearty, healthful and nutritious option.

But there are some traps when it comes to salads and bowls; traps that could mean we’re tricking ourselves thinking we’re eating a super-healthy option, when actually we’re not.

Man (and woman) cannot live on leaves alone. While we might think of a salad as being a big pile of green, this is not going to give us much in the way of satiety – that satisfying feeling of being just full enough. If your salad lunch is mainly leaves with a few other veges and a bit of chicken tossed through, you’re likely to be reaching for snacks to calm the hangry within a couple of hours. So when it comes to a salad bowl, make sure you balance it as you would any meal: include some healthy carbohydrate, a good amount of protein and half a plate of colorful vegetables, along with a little healthy fat (likely in the form of dressing). The ideal salad will have texture as well as flavor; so think about a few nuts and seeds for satisfying crunch, and some firmer veges like beans or broccoli.

Carb overload

Poké bowls are based on a grain – usually rice. Bonus points if you can get brown rice – this adds a bit of extra fiber – but keep an eye on the serving size. Some of the poké bowls I’ve tried have featured close to a cup of rice; a serving that would be fine for a big guy in a physical job, but far too much for a woman who spends most of her day sitting down. (A cup of cooked brown rice has 256 calories; over half what I’d want to eat for lunch. It also has 53g carbs). Some carbohydrate is important in a meal – but look to keep rice servings around half a cup or so. A good option with poké is to ask for half salad, half rice. With other grains – think whole grains such as quinoa, bulgur, buckwheat or teff – the same rule applies.