Hi, SKOL. You're smart to wonder about the details.

In some versions of Atkins (I can't find one at the moment!), there's an allowance for commercial bottled salad dressings containing less than 1g sugar per serving. This helps make the plan more user friendly, as Deirdra says. However, those bottled dressings, like all commercial "food products," have a lot of other stuff in them besides sugar. Scary unpronounceable stuff.

So if you want to get off to a great start, making your own salad dressing with lovely olive oil and seasonings is a good way to go.

Some people avoid mayonnaise for the reason of sugar content, and also because most mayo is made with soybean oil. Commercial mayo is one of my convenience foods--I don't make my own. But I limit the quantity.

Back to the question of sugar. Technically, "sugar" is simply a name for one of the chemical configurations of carbohydrate. All carbohydrate--including lettuce--turns into glucose (a form of sugar) for use as fuel in your body. So whether it's on the label as sugar--meaning added sugar--or just some mystery carbohydrate, one gram or less probably won't hurt you. But count all the grams you eat! They do add up.

As a sidelight, food manufacturers are very clever at dodging the admission of sugar. Read the labels and you'll see about a hundred different names for sugar, including healthy-sounding stuff like "agave nectar" and "natural organic honey." Duh. It's sugar.

The answer? Don't eat stuff with a label on it, mostly.

Best wishes.