Would you put whipped cream on jello/jelly? That’s also dairy and features heavily in dessert. Cream cheese is used to make some icing, cheese cake is basically a brick of sweetened cream cheese. So cream cheese also shows up in desserts.

So the person who came up with it was just familiar with how desserts work.

Salad doesn’t mean vegetables. Salad is a dish made of a mixture of discrete pieces. See other things like potato salad, macaroni salad, tuna salad, antipasto salad, caprese salad, etc. You’re going to have a lot of food hangups if this bothers you.

Very few would include all of the things listed above and I’ve never actually seen veggies in one.

The one my family makes is just a dessert that’s primarily jello with a thin layer of cream cheese and pretzels. Has a nice combo of salty and sweet.

Not sure why people are so grossed out by that, what’s wrong with it?