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Eat By Color for Health
Rate it! Votes (3) | Comments (0) By Leanne C. Ely Posted August 6th, 2007 Leanne C. Ely is the author of Healthy Foods : An Irreverent Guide to Understanding Nutrition and Feeding Your Family Well, (2001, Champion Press (WI))	Healthy Foods : An Irreverent Guide to Understanding Nutrition and Feeding Your Family Well

A pale hunk of iceberg lettuce with a ladle of bleu cheese dressing doesn't convey healthy eating too much, does it? And yet so many people think because they've eaten this "salad", they're giving their bodies the nutrition it needs. Not true!

A good rule of thumb for evaluating what you eat should be COLOR. Color is a great indicator of what's ahead: good nutrition or empty calories. The more vibrant the color, the healthier it is.

Let's go back to that iceberg lettuce salad. It's pale green and white. The iceberg lettuce's value is mostly the water it carries. Fiber is minimal and nutrition almost non-existent. The bleu cheese is dripping with all kinds of fat so that X's that off the list immediately. Let's do a salad makeover, shall we?

First of all, you need to choose GREEN. Green like spinach, salad bowl or romaine lettuces--all wonderful examples of what green should look like. The color is there and so is the nutrition.

Look for RED. Tomatoes come to mind. Vine ripened and full of vitamin C, tomatoes also contain the important phytochemical lypocene that helps fight cancer.

ORANGE or YELLOW? How about some colorful bell pepper or (when in season) summer squash? Carrots are fantastic sources for beta-carotene, a pre-vitamin for vitamin A. Beta carotene has so many important functions, but the best part about beta carotene is that it will convert into only as much vitamin A as the body needs so there's no worry about taking in too much. You know what happens if you have too much beta carotene? You turn orange! My son was orange for the first and second year of his life--he LOVED sweet potatoes.

This is all common sense nutrition here, but the point is to get you thinking next time you're meandering your way through the produce section at the grocery store. Think in vivid, living color--you NEED the nutrition!

Related Recipes Leanne Ely's Pistou Vegetable Soup Leanne Ely's Wilted Spinach and Citrus Salad Spa Cuisine Tostada Bar Vegetable, Bean Sprout and Tofu Stir-Fry Related Features Eating Mini-Meals for Health The Fit Freezer - How to Make Low Fat Frozen Meals at Home The Four Diet Myths

 

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