You forgot lettuce and other greens are also a source of roughage.
Lettuce doesn’t fill me up. Carbs fill me up. Potato salad fills me up.
I barely ate lettuce until my 40s. I eat more now, but at home, not in restaurants.
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Please don’t get me wrong.
I have nothing personally against lettuce (of any color, or variety).
Just for me, personally, if I am cooking at home, I see no need for lettuce. If I wanted crunch or texture, there are better and more nutritious alternatives, like cabbage or escarole or even bok choy, or if I wanted fiber or volume then any other type of vegetables would almost suffice.
I can totally see why people would use lettuce at home (as opposed to in a commercial kitchen, where the motivations are often very different), it’s just not something that appeals to me.
Again, as always, eat and let eat.
Cheers.
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I’m not a big lettuce person either, but to meld this with our hot summer eating/cooking discussion in another thread, sometimes it’s the best option on hot summer days. Most greens I like require some cooking, and I do appreciate having lettuce as an option for those days when you don’t want to cook a bed of 2-4 veggies for a different vegetable/texture mix. Also with a lot of busy days, cooking vegetables is just another thing that I have to add and prep, and there have been many days when tossing the protein on a bed of lettuce gets me to eating quicker! 
It’s one of the reasons I do buy salad mixes, so I don’t have 5 blends of lettuces and greens waiting for me to prep, cut and mix.
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I understand even avoiding lettuce.
To me, lettuce isn’t a given when it comes to making a salad. I barely ate lettuce for the first half of my life. I remember rolling my eyes 20 years ago, when my friend said he wanted to order a light salad, and I proceeded to order perogies topped with bacon, fried onions and sour cream.
I’m veering on a tangent here, but I fully admit, as women age, our metabolisms change in a way that aging mens’ metabolisms don’t. Men can keep their Hungry Man-type diet without seeing a huge change in their physique.
Many women, if they don’t watch their caloric intake and food choices carefully, have a big surprise sometime between 45 and 55. I have been meeting with a dietitian for 5 years now, and the prescribed dinner on my plan has 2 cups of leafy greens of some sort for dinner each night (along with 3 oz of chicken/fish/meat/ beans, 1/2 cup potato/rice/pasta, 1 cup other veg/fruit, a tbsp oil/butter/dressing, etc), if I was to stick with it. I rarely stick to that, but I’m close
Lettuce, and salads in general, have become my friend because I have to watch what I eat in a way that men don’t.
I also get hives from the preservatives in bagged lettuce and most restaurant lettuce or arugula salad, so, my salads from restaurants are made of grilled veg, potatoes, beets, etc.
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Men don’t have to watch what they eat?
Men have plenty of health problems because of this belief, me included.
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Of course you have to watch what you eat.
You don’t have menopause change your metabolism over the course of a few years.
You also have more muscle, in general, so you can lose weight faster and I’d say, watching my male friends from my female perspective, with less effort.
So many women I know gain weight when they eat the meals their male partners like to eat. I’m also convinced that’s why you see so many women, esp in their 50s and 60s, order main course salad in North America.
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I have to watch what I eat.
Otherwise, I’ll end up with a spoonful of yogurt up on my nostrils.
#EatingBlindfoldedSucks
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Your yogurt consumption sounds very 9 1/2 Weeks. Dirty yogurt, up your nostrils.
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Exactly. I used to buy several kinds, bring them home, wash them, spin them, and put them in a big container for salad any old time, but I was younger and had more energy. If I see a mix that has greens that I like and it looks fresh (bonus points if it’s organic) I’ll buy it. Also there are more mixes available than back then.
When we had our house repiped (leaks in the ceiling, front and back yards), I wasn’t expecting the cold tap water to come out at 120 degrees. Rather than run the water til it cools off and wasting it, I switched to bagged for the most part, and wash it in the morning, or pour water into a big bowl and put it in front of the fan that I use to keep fruit from going bad too quickly until it cools off.
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Wow! My Garden hoses are like that, but from the tap? Dayum.
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That’s actually a burn hazard.
Yeah, I know, anything over 114 can burn you. The hospital where I worked kept the hot water slightly below that. It cools off eventually, but what a waste of water. I tend to fill up buckets with the hot water- it cools down at about a bucketful- and wait until it cools off to water plants, aquariums, etc. It’s a pain in the butt (possibly literally), but the alternative is to jackammer up the slab, which is where the original plumbing was.
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No sht. I’ve got gerd because of my old chowhound ways. I wish I could eat whatever the heck I wanted. Wish I could eat BBQ every day. Not to be.
Update- I bought a bag of locally (within a hundred miles) grown winter salad mix that looked so pretty and fresh I had to buy it. Well over half was red, and I must say, it’s just fabulous, red included. None of it’s gone bad, so I’ve conditionally changed my mind.
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Yay! Still time for a spring planting!
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I don’t mind it once in awhile if it’s really fresh, but to me it doesn’t add much texture or an interesting flavor. And I really hate that red baby oak leaf lettuce in some of the pre-washed salad mixes; no matter the freshness date on the container, I’m constantly having to pick that out.
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No, late as always I’m doing spuds, radishes, and beets. Hopefully I’ll have a success story to tell, our weather has been so squirrely there’s no telling what “spring” is going to look like, but I dread it anyway.
No, i reckon I taught you them, Lambchop was merely the interpreter. 
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