How often have you ordered a salad–on a date or over a business lunch thinking it will be the "easy" menu item–only to find lettuce that is too big to eat politely, or so small you spend the whole meal wrestling food onto the fork. Salads that offer a positive user experience are not as common as you might think.

So this raises the question, how to spot a salad that is easy to eat and also tastes great? A well designed salad must have a few key elements; texture, color, flavor of course, but size and shape are critical. Here are some guidelines for your next salad encounter:

- Lettuce needs to fit on your fork and in your mouth—and allow for closed mouth chewing. If you've ever had Frise you know why this matters.

- The good bits in the salad (what ever yours are) need to be attainable. So this means not too many and not too small.

- Beware the crouton. They are typically either so small and dry you can't pierce them with a fork, or so big and dry you can't chew them. And yet somehow they are salad treasure; leaving croutons behind evokes feelings of remorse and regret.



Perhaps all these salad issues could be avoided if Emily Post simply updated the traditional salad fork to a Spork; a fork for piercing, and spoon for scooping. (I am not holding my breath on this one.) Consider this, at your next meal out with friends won't everyone be curious if you bring your own Spork? You can simply explain that if you can't design the salad, at least you'll be able to eat it.