What can eating a better Rainbow of fruits and vegetables do for you? Lead you to your pot of gold – the better health results you crave – of course! That’s right, your body wants and needs a variety of colors, from real food, daily.
Different colors indicate the different super powers found in plants.
- Red foods help promote healthy hearts, skin, and reduce risk of certain cancers.
- Orange and Yellow foods promote healthy vision, help build and repair healthy skin – both external and internal (digestive & urinary tracts, airways etc)…
- Green foods promote hormone and digestive balance, support detoxification, healthy vision, and reduce risk of certain cancers.
- Blue and Purple foods promote cognitive, oral and heart health, reduce risk of certain cancers.
- White and brown foods promote liver, gastrointestinal health, and help reduce risk of certain cancers.
Are you making the right choices?
- Ideally your better nutrition plan focuses on whole plant foods – If yours is, you are making better choices already!
- If you are getting a variety of colors each day you are giving your body the resources (nutrients) it needs to do all its different tasks, better.
- If you have a favorite color – don’t worry, most of us do – notice if it changes seasonally and consider ways that you can keep getting that color while adding in the others more often.
- Better nutrition includes better nutrient balance, so make sure you know the difference between non-starchy and starchy vegetables – which like fruit, count as a carb – and which fruits actually count as fats, like avocados.
- Are you choosing dehydrated or dried fruits and vegetables? One reason to eat fruits and vegetables is to get the water, which helps their nutrients get into your cells to be used, better. When dried, fruits and starchy vegetables can also be much higher in sugar per serving, so pay attention to quantity. That said, dried and dehydrated can be a fun and convenient way to choose veggies and fruit more often.
- Are you choosing fruits more often? Your better rainbow should be more vegetables non-starchy vegetables – than fruits. Fruits are awesome but aim to keep them to 1-2 servings daily and get the rest of your colors from vegetables, spices, and herbs.
- Quality is as important as quantity. If you eat certified organic – great! Frozen foods are often cheaper… so if budget is ruining your rainbow efforts, choose frozen.
- How you cook your vegetables can make a difference in the nutrients that are available for your body to absorb. If you boil the heck out of Brussels sprouts, a lot of the nutrients are left behind. All the other choices are better nutrition wins because it means you will be getting in fruits and vegetables more often.
Eating a rainbow is something that everyone can do.
Fruits and veggies don’t just act as our daily clean-up team internally, they also play leadership roles in fighting disease. If you are focusing on disease prevention or regaining your health by rejuvenating your immune system – adding in a better rainbow of colors is essential.
For more on ways to help rejuvenate your immunity, subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to find out when I post my next video. Take care!
