How colorful is your plate? How many colors can you see? I see many families sitting down to a plate of drab beige food at dinner time and I think this is a little sad with all the colorful food available to us.
Colorful fresh foods, especially when they’re at their ripest and brightest during a season, are full of nutrients, antioxidants and many other good things that can improve our health in many ways.
Red
Many red foods contain lycopene which is super good at keeping some of our vital organs healthy. Red peppers and tomatoes contain a lot of lycopene and you can actually increase the effectiveness of lycopene by cooking it.
Yellow and Orange
Oranges and lemons are popular sources of vitamin C but many other yellow and orange foods contain vitamin c, potassium and folic acid too. Carrots are not the only food to help your eyesight. Many orange colored fruit and vegetables contain beta-carotene which provides a healthy dose of vitamin A. Want to improve your skin? Yellow and orange will help to clear your complexion and give your skin that healthy glow.
Green
With so many green fruits and vegetables, let’s not forget those herbs too. We have an abundance of flavors within these herbs to choose from it’s easy to add some green to your plate each meal time. Greens are great for vitamin A (especially leafy vegetables such as spinach and kale) and are also wonderful for a dose of vitamin K. It’s not something you hear much about but vitamin K is good for your blood and helps protect against cancer.
Blue and Purple
More and more foods of these darker shades are now being called “superfoods”. For their antioxidant properties and ways they can help power the brain (think blueberries) blue and purple foods are truly super. There are also a number that have anti-ageing properties AND help protect the heart.
Creating a rainbow on your plate every mealtime would be a serious challenge but you can vary your diet each mealtime, giving your body a range of fuels. Start with 2 or 3 colors and keep it fresh and unprocessed.
