When summer's a wet lettuce

1. Calories

Some of these salads are more fattening than a pork pie. If you're on a diet, you could have a Big Mac and a chunk of chocolate and have eaten fewer calories than in some of these salad boxes. They would probably have had more flavour too.

2. Pasta

Since when did pasta become an integral ingredient of a British salad? Especially cold, white, damp, tasteless pasta. Yuk. But, of course, it fills up a lot of space.

3. Dressing

We love salad dressing - olive oil, balsamic vinegar, or a small dollop of tasty mayonnaise. But what we had in many of these boxes was gloop. Tasteless, slimy gloop that slops over everything.

4. Crispness

Lettuce is meant to be fresh and crisp, not damp and tired - no wonder they drown it in gloop.

5. Tomatoes

One day, when we get round to it, we shall start a Campaign for Real Tomatoes. There's a generation growing up which probably has no idea what a tomato is meant to taste like. Some of the salad boxes used cherry tomatoes, small and sweet and tasty. One used delicious vine tomatoes. Most used standard tomatoes that taste of very little.

6. Chicken and bacon

Many of these salads contain them. Really? If we hadn't read the ingredients, we wouldn't have recognised them by their taste, which was often more of a wet cardboard sensation.

7. Onion

Everywhere. Red onion. Too much of it. And a sad reflection of the other ingredients that this was often the only item that tasted of anything.

8. Honey and mustard

Somewhere there is a factory turning out so-called honey and mustard flavouring for chicken. It is particularly nasty.

All in all, our experience of salad boxes made us yearn for a nice, greasy burger with lots of chips. So, after all that, are there any salad boxes worth trying? Well yes, a few.

THE BEST

ASDA TUNA NICOISE SALAD, £2.88 for 448g

Tuna, new potatoes, egg, beans, olives, cherry tomatoes, onion. There was masses of this and it tasted very good - though we could have done without the onion and would have liked the lettuce crisper. But a real meal. 600 calories too - the same as a pork pie - but there was a lot of it.

BOOTS SHAPERS TUNA NICOISE, £2.50 for 250g

Tuna flakes with free range boiled egg, potato, tomatoes, cucumber, green beans, olives, onion, lettuce and a vinaigrette dressing.

This was surprisingly good and fresh tasting. Good flavours, low in calories and fat.

CO-OP FREE RANGE EGG AND POTATO SALAD, £1.49 for 240g

Lovely old fashioned salad, the sort your gran used to give you for tea. Boiled egg, iceberg lettuce, carrot, cucumber, potatoes, tomatoes, radish, white cabbage and a sachet of salad cream.. Very refreshing and made a nice change.

MARKS & SPENCER TOMATO AND MOZZARELLA SALAD, £2.99 for 220g

Very simple, very good. Plenty of mozzarella, some cherry tomatoes and tiny plum tomatoes, spinach eaves and pesto dressing.

MORRISON'S EGG SALAD LUNCHBOX, £1.09

One and a half hard boiled eggs with a dollop of Marie Rose sauce - kept in a corner so it doesn't drown everything - with some lettuce, tomato and onion. Simple, fresh and tasty

REAL MEALS, SALTBURN, £2.50

Organic lettuce, vine tomatoes full of flavour, cucumber, peppers, celery, delicious strong Spanish cheese and an interesting dressing. Made while you wait. Fresh, tasty, impossible to beat.

PRETTY GOOD

ASDA EGG AND NEW POTATO SALAD, £1.44 for 290g

Egg, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, mixed salad and salad cream. Light and fresh. 160 cals.

MARKS & SPENCER COUNT ON US PASTA WITH TOMATO AND CHICKEN, 330g

330 cals - which is quite a lot for a so-called low calorie salad. Free range egg pasta, light mayo dressing, cooked tomato, spinach and basil marinated chicken breast. Both pasta and chicken were very tasty and the dressing was less gloopy than many.

MORRISONS BEEF LUNCHBOX, £1.49

Thin but tasty beef, potato and salad.

SAINSBURY'S CHARGRILLED CHICKEN AND PESTO, £2.50 for 250g

38 per cent pasta, 16 per cent chicken breast, lots of leaves, a few cherry tomatoes and some quite interesting pesto dressing. Pleasant enough, though without the dressing, the chicken would have tasted of very little

SAINSBURY'S TUNA SALAD BOWL, £1.99 for 400g

Tuna with pasta, lollo rosso lettuce, cucumber, sweetcorn, onion, vinaigrette and mayonnaise. Only a quarter of this was pasta. Not very interesting salad, but decent dressing.

TAYLOR'S OF DARLINGTON SALAD TUB, £1.20

Crispy lettuce, cherry tomatoes, half a boiled egg, red pepper and lots of coronation chicken, which tasted more of dressing than chicken. But freshly made. Excellent value.

TESCO CHARGRILLED CHICKEN AND BACON SALAD, £1.99 for 300g

A lot of pasta, not much chicken, even less bacon. Quite nice yogurt and herb dressing, but we weren't overly impressed. And with over 650 calories, we wish we'd enjoyed it more.

WE'D RATHER HAVE A BURGER...

ASDA CHICKEN AND BACON PASTA SALAD, £1.68 for 280g

This has tiny amounts of smoked bacon and tasteless chicken and a lot of pasta and gloop.

BOOTS HONEY AND MUSTARD CHICKEN, £2.20 for 275g

Pasta in a honey and mustard dressing with chicken, red and yellow peppers, sweetcorn and lettuce. Nearly half of this was pasta that seemed particularly tasteless. The little bit of chicken tasted of nothing very much, the salad stuff was OK, but we just seemed to spend an awful lot of time chewing through the pasta.

MARKS & SPENCER POACHED SCOTTISH SALMON SALAD, £2.00 for 200g

Gloopy, gloopy, far too gloopy. The poached salmon was good and the pasta was OK. The creamy dill and lemon dressing was very nice - but took up nearly a quarter of the tub, which meant everything was drowned in gloop. If there had been less dressing, or it had been - as so many others put it - in a separate container so you could add as much or as little as you like, we would have liked it. As it is, we felt slightly sick.

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