Cheese & Coleslaw Wrap
The orange in raw carrots comes from beta-carotene, a compound your body converts to vitamin A. A crossover trial found that without fat in the dressing, your body absorbs essentially none of it.
The coleslaw in this wrap pairs those carrots with mayo. Shredded cabbage and carrots in a tangy honey-mustard dressing, rolled up with cheddar inside a whole wheat tortilla. Five minutes, 400 calories, no cooking.
The orange in raw carrots comes from beta-carotene, a compound your body converts to vitamin A. A crossover trial found that without fat in the dressing, your body absorbs essentially none of it.
The coleslaw in this wrap pairs those carrots with mayo. Shredded cabbage and carrots in a tangy honey-mustard dressing, rolled up with cheddar inside a whole wheat tortilla. Five minutes, 400 calories, no cooking.
Ingredients
- cabbage 3 ounces
- carrot 3 ounces
- yogurt, nonfat 1 tablespoon
- mayonnaise 1 tablespoon
- honey 1 teaspoon
- yellow mustard 0.5 teaspoon
- tortilla wrap, whole wheat 1 piece
- cheddar cheese 1 ounce
Method
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Combine the shredded cabbage and carrots in a bowl.
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In a small bowl, prepare the dressing by mixing yogurt, mayonnaise, honey and mustard. Stir this dressing into the cabbage and carrot mixture. Season the salad with salt and pepper.
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Place the wrap on a plate and top it with cheese and the coleslaw. Roll up the wrap and serve.
Keep the dressing and slaw separate until you are ready to eat. The wrap stays crisp, and the mayo still works the moment it meets the carrots.
A crossover trial gave seven people identical raw vegetable salads (including shredded carrots) with dressings at zero, six, and twenty-eight grams of fat. Without fat, carotenoid absorption was essentially zero. With six grams, it improved. With twenty-eight, it improved further. The tablespoon of mayo in this recipe provides roughly ten grams of fat, comfortably above the threshold the researchers identified for meaningful beta-carotene absorption from raw vegetables.
Dressing Fat & Carotenoid Absorption · DOIWhy This Works
Behind this recipe
Can I skip the mayo and use all yogurt?
You can, but there is a tradeoff worth knowing about. Nonfat yogurt adds tang, but it has almost no fat. A crossover trial found that raw vegetable salads eaten with fat-free dressing produced essentially zero beta-carotene absorption. The mayo in this recipe provides roughly ten grams of fat, which crosses the threshold the researchers identified for meaningful absorption from raw vegetables. If you drop the mayo entirely, the carrots still taste good, but your body may miss most of what is inside them. A middle ground: keep the tablespoon of mayo, or stir a teaspoon of olive oil into the dressing.
Is 22 grams of fat too much for a 400-calorie meal?
Twenty-two grams means about half this wrap's calories come from fat. That sounds high if you have been told to keep fat low. But a systematic review of every controlled feeding trial found that dietary fat percentage did not predict weight loss: every fat level produced the same results when calories were matched. What matters for weight management is total energy, not the fat-to-carb ratio. The fat in this wrap also has a functional role: it is what allows your body to absorb the beta-carotene from the raw carrots.
Read the full evidence reviewHow much fiber does this wrap provide?
5 grams, mostly from the whole wheat tortilla and the raw cabbage. That is roughly 20 percent of a typical 25-gram daily target. Across 62 pooled trials, higher fiber intake was consistently linked to greater fat loss, but the researchers noted the effect works on a longer timeline. One wrap will not transform anything overnight. But choosing whole wheat over white and raw vegetables over none, meal after meal, compounds.
Read the full evidence review
