New Year's Resolution: Eat More Rainbows

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New Year's Resolution: Eat More Rainbows

 

Your new year's resolution should be to eat one more

rainbow each day than you did last year. Legend suggests

that a pot of gold can be found at the end of each rainbow.

That treasure can be cashed in to preserve your good

health and ward off future disease.

 

Society considers that which is white, to be pure.

Such a belief can be deceptive. By shining white light

through a prism, one is instantly blessed with the

hidden beauty and complex nature of our universe. A

pure white beam of light reveals its inner essense.

 

Most people can name the seven visible colors of the

rainbow's spectrum. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow,

orange, and red. Of course, there are two other colors,

often forgotten, but always present, ultraviolet and infra-

red.

 

Animals and insects feel these colors. Plants sense them

too. While we lack the same receptors and are blind to their

existance, our handicap cannot negate their influence.

 

The ultras and infras of plants are magical substances,

indeed! They include plant chemicals, or phyto chemicals,

such as isoflavones and bioflavinoids. Science teaches us

that plants protect themselves from attack with their own

secretions and chemical messengers. Vegetables repel insects

who would eat them, and blossoms attract other insects with

a perfume so that their pollens can be spread and their

species self-propagate. Plants protect themselves from too

much heat, or cold, or wind, or too much moisture,

maintaining their own good health with their specialized

hormones. Plants can cure their own sicknesses and cancers

by secreting and bathing themselves with these enchanted

essences.

 

When we eat the plants, we are similarly protected. Modern

science has confirmed the centuries-old traditions and lore

from cultures that refined the sacred techniques of using

foods as medicine. We have often heart that " an apple a

day keeps the doctor away. " Such wisdom!

 

Today's Perfect Rainbow

 

Eat foods of color. The perfect color can be found right in

the middle of our rainbow, the color green.

 

Eat green for wellness.

 

In the 1980s, scientists first began to explore how

phytochemicals prevent cancers. A great amount of emphasis

was placed upon the fruits and vegetables that contain

vibrant colors. The best known of these wonder drugs was

recognized as beta carotene. That's what gives carrots their

bright orange hue.

 

In the 1990s, scientists at the University of Minnesota

(Steinmetz, et. al.) categorized different groups of fruits

and vegetables demonstrating life giving, disease fighting

qualities. In doing so, they defined some of those magic

colors, and the phytochemicals so contained within those

pigments.

 

The violet, indigo and blues of the plant kingdom include

phenols and dithiolthiolnines contained in eggplant,

cruciferous vegetables, grapes, plums, and grains.

 

Eat onions and shallots, leeks, scallions and garlic for

cancer-fighting alliums. Those green leafy vegetables

contain flavonoids, and inositol is found in beans. Green

fruits and veggies contain phenols, and plant sterols,

protease inhibitors and saponins.

 

Yellow limonines contained in citrus fruit and squash have

also been identified as cancer fighters, as have the orange

carotines in carrots, and my all-time favorite vitamin pill,

the cantaloupe. Balancing out the rainbow's spectrum would

be the red phenols in peppers, radishes, and tomatoes.

 

Tens of thousands of unique substances have been identified,

and there are still plant hormones and enzymes yet to be

discovered.

 

Remarkably, the one plant containing the greatest amount of

these wonderful phytochemicals is the soybean. The tiny

soybean contains coumarins, flavonoids, inositol, isoflavones,

lignans, phenols, plant sterols, protease inhibitors,

saponins, and Omega 3 and Omega 6 oils.

 

So, on new year's eve, visit your local produce store

and treat yourself and family to a rainbow. Make this a

daily tradition never to be broken.

 

Robert Cohen

http://www.notmilk.com