Is Your Diet Colorblind?

Do you really need to look at the color of the foods you’re eating? If you are trying to be a healthy eater, you may already pay attention to vitamins, minerals, and the basic food groups. It might surprise you to learn that many experts on healthy diets also recommend paying attention to the color of your food. The colors in many plant foods are often provided by substances known as phytonutrients. Scientists have determined that these phytonutrients have many health bestowing properties. Many researchers now suggest that we can improve our health, perhaps significantly, by eating a diet rich in colorful plant foods. They even suggest that in order to eat healthy, we try to include every color of the rainbow in our daily diet.

What are these colors? In school we learned ROYGBIV-red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The idea for good nutrition is to eat a diet that falls across this range every day.

RED plant foods contain lycopene. Lycopene appears to rid the body of free radicals, which are known to harm genes. Lycopene may help protect against prostate and breast cancer, and also lung and heart disease.

RED plant foods include tomatoes, guava, rosehip, watermelon and pink grapefruit.

YELLOW/ORANGE plant foods contain alpha and beta caratene, as well as lutein and zeaxanthin. These substance are important for heart and eye health.

YELLOW/ORANGE plant foods include pumpkin, carrots, canteloupe, apricots, sweet potatoes, and winter squash.

GREEN plant foods can have sulforaphane, isocyanate and indoles which protect cells and may help fight cancer growth, as well ascatechins and quercetin that may help the heart.

GREEN plant foods include spinach, broccoli, cabbage, peas, avocado, kiwi, brussels sprouts, as well as herbs such as oregano, dill and parsley.

BLUE/PURPLE fruits and vegetables contain varying amounts of health-promoting phytochemicals such as anthocyanins and phenolics. Choose from a range including blueberries, blackberries, eggplant, plums, raisins. These assist in memory function.

RED/PURPLE plant foods contain anthocyanins which help with blood flow, and may slow the aging of cells

RED/PURPLE foods include beets, blackberries, blueberries, currants, cherry, eggplant, grapes, and grape juice.

Go easy on the beige and brown foods such as pasta and starchy carbs. When there are too many of these drab colors on your plate, weight gain is almost certain. That’s because these beige foods often are high in calories and can leave you feeling hungry later. A cup of beige or brown beans can be over 200 calories….but a cup of red or green vegetables is under a hundred! Add fresh greens, deep purple-reds and bright yellow-orange to a meal, and watch the nutrient content go up, while calories go down! Plus, you’ll get more enjoyment from eating when there’s a variety of colors and flavors on your plate.

By eating a range of deeply colored foods from across the rainbow spectrum, we can maximize the health benefit of foods we eat.