7 Reasons to Eat a Rainbow Everday

Rainbow eating – practical tools to help you optimise your diet through colour...

We all know how seeing a Rainbow on a rainy day can lift our mood and make us smile – well eating a ‘rainbow’ coloured plate of food can make our tummies smile too and lift our mood in just the same way.

Maybe you recall the 7 colours of the rainbow through some little rhyme you learned in primary school? Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. We can match the foods into the colour groups easily – think orange for carrots and tangerines; or leafy ‘greens’. When grouping these from a nutritional standpoint we generally group those rich colours down the blue, indigo, violet end of the spectrum together (think blue-berries, purple cabbage, and black grapes) and we add in an extra colour to represent the white/tan colour (no not the white simple carbs of white bread and cakes but healthy cauliflower, garlic, ginger, onions and seeds).

Take a look here for a great reference of how the coloured foods match into the rainbow for an easy way to think about food groupings to add into your diet every day.(IFM Phytonutrient spectrum foods list). Ideally you want to get two servings of each colour into your diet daily. A serving is half a cup of cooked food like sweet potato, or one cup of raw vegetables like salad greens.

Why Coloured Plants?

So why is it important to eat different coloured vegetables? Plants contain thousands of natural chemical compounds called phyto-nutrients. ‘Phyto’ just means plant. The different chemicals have different properties which can be protective for health and these chemicals often also have a pigment which gives the plant its distinctive colour (think yellow-orange foods like carrots and winter squash which are rich in the phyto-nutrient called beta-carotene). The phyto-nutrients are fundamentally beneficial for the plant, for example to protect them from the damage of the sun. But if you eat the plant then it helps provide the same protection to your cells. Additionally, the phyto-nutrients feed into a chain of reactions in the body. So, if we take the example of our beta-carotene it can be converted in the body into Vitamin A which is needed for, amongst other things, good eye health. There’s your connection about eating carrots being good for your eyesight. The more plant food you eat, the more phyto-nutrients you get. The different phyto-nutrients frequently have different pigments or colours with different benefits, and in this way eating different coloured fruits and vegetables helps you make sure you are getting a good variety of their health protective properties. Here is another chart which shows the food colours with some example of their health protective effects such as heart and brain health. [BANT chart].

Keeping track of those servings

It can be a really good habit to get into when serving up your plate of food to try and squeeze in some of each colour onto each plate. A green salad with red radish, yellow peppers and a side of tomato salsa (tomato, white onion and parsley with olive oil) doesn’t take long to prepare. Serve it with some wild salmon, followed by a small portion of colourful mixed berries for dessert, maybe sprinkled with a few pomegranates and a few sliced almonds, and you are well on your way to your daily rainbow. But it can be really motivating to have a checklist to help you plan your meals for the day. And this can be especially useful for children, or if you are trying to help older family members to add more variety to their meals. Here is a great tool that can serve as a useful checklist to make sure you are getting that colourful variety on a daily basis. [IFM rainbow eating checklist]

Food as Medicine

A nutritional therapist is able to use their knowledge of different food colours and groups to help devise dietary plans to support you whether you are just looking to be as proactive as you can in seeking optimal health, or if you want to address some particular health concerns. Functional medicine also takes Nutrition as an important component of a 360’ review of the aspects of your health and wellbeing.

Credit:

The phytonutrient resources are provided courtesy of the Institute for Functional Medicine. Our consultant nutritionist is registered with the IFM. You can find out more about their work here.