Why your foods should be colorful?

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Eating " naturally " colorful foods are very healthy. As they say, look for the rainbow diet!

 

Taken from www.whfoods.org newsletter.

 

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Q: Why your foods should be colorful?

 

A: In the world of processed food, you cannot judge the quality of a food by the way it looks. Artificial colors, mechanical processing techniques, and genetic engineering can create foods that look fantastic, but have very little nutritional value. Don't judge your processed foods (and in many cases, even your non-organic, unprocessed foods) by their color! It's sometimes the 2 parts per million of citrus red dye number 2 that gives the orange peels their rich color - but this artificial dye cannot be legally used on organic oranges.

When eating the World's Healthiest Foods that have been organically grown, the situation is exactly the opposite. The more colorful your meal, the greater likelihood you will receive a rich diversity of nutrients. The World's Healthiest Foods are NATURALLY colorful. They are rich in phytonutrients that provide them with a rainbow of colors. The combination of phytonutrients in colorful fruits and vegetables have a variety of actions: they act as powerful antioxidants, have anti-inflammatory effects, help the way neurons communicate in the brain and help reduce the effects of aging.

These phytonutrients give carrots and winter squash their rich orange-red color, make beets a brilliant red and green leafy vegetables, such as kale, a deep green. In fact if you eat the leafy greens like mustard greens or chard or kale, you should also think about what happens to leaves in the fall of the year, as they change to yellow or orange or red. These colors are actually in the leaves year-round, but just get overshadowed by the green. You're actually eating a variety of colors when you eat a green leafy vegetable! Enjoy the World's Healthiest Foods for their colors and you will be also be enjoying them for their unique nutritional richness.