|
COLOURFUL FOOD
Should Your Foods Be Colourful?
Choose naturally coloured foods!
In the world of processed food you cannot judge the quality of a food by the way it looks . Artificial colours, artificial tastes, mechanical processing techniques, and genetic engineering can create foods that look fantastic but have very little nutritional value. Don't judge your processed foods - or also in many cases non-organic unprocessed foods - by their colour. For example, it is sometimes the two parts per million of citrus red dye number 2 that gives the peel of conventionally grown oranges their rich color. (This artificial dye cannot be used legally on organic oranges.)
 When eating foods that have been organically grown, the situation is exactly the opposite. The more colourful your meal the more you will receive a rich diversity of nutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals and other micro-nutrients). The World's Healthiest Foods are NATURALLY colourful. They are rich in phyto-nutrients that provide them with a rainbow of colours. The numerous phyto-nutrients in colourful fruits and vegetables have a variety of actions: They act as powerful antioxidants, have anti-inflammatory effects, help neurons communicate in the brain, and help reduce the effects of aging.
These phytonutrients give carrots and winter squash their rich orange-red colour, make beets a brilliant red and provide green leafy vegetables such as kale with their deep green hue. In fact, if you eat leafy greens like kale or mustard greens or chard, it's interesting to think about what happens to leaves in the fall to get a deeper appreciation for all of the phytonutrients included in these foods. During the fall, leaves change in colour from green to yellow or orange or red; these colours are actually in the leaves year round, but just get overshadowed by the green. Therefore, when you eat a green leafy vegetable, you are actually eating a variety of colours and the phyto-nutrients that are reflected in those hues! Enjoy healthy foods for their colours and you will also be enjoying them for their unique nutritional richness.
|
