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| The Rainbow Connection
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| Treat your plate like a canvas—use lots of vivid colors and you’ll create a
beautiful portrait of health. Pigmentation proves to be a powerful predictor
of nutritional soundness.
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Beige may be the safe choice for your living room but when it comes to your health you might want to re-think that lackluster nutritional palette and go for a brilliantly multi-hued tropical punch.
Deep, vivid, vibrant colors—beet red, lemon yellow, pink grapefruit, plum purple—are visually arresting and enliven the appearance of any plate, but in this case it appears that beauty is as beauty does.
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And there is growing evidence to suggest that pigments in food do much to improve your overall health and may even offer protection against many serious diseases.
“Most of the naturally occurring pigments in plant-based foods, known as phytochemicals, act as powerful antioxidants. There are thousands of different types. Antioxidants help mop up free radicals in our bodies. Free radicals can damage cells and our DNA and there are concerns that they are linked to the development of some cancers, heart disease and aging,” says leading Australian dietitian Karen Inge, (www.kareninge.com) director of the institute of Health and Fitness in Melbourne, media personality and author of several books.
Oxygen, while life-sustaining, is both friend and foe, helping us to produce necessary energy but also creating destructive and unstable free radicals that can cause damage to other cells.
“Current thinking points to this damage as the root cause of all degenerative diseases, inflammation and the aging process in general. The human body comes equipped with an antioxidant defense system that deactivates these highly reactive free radicals. Antioxidants enzymes (made in the body) and antioxidant nutrients (found in foods) soak up all the excess energy that these free radicals have, turning them into harmless particles or waste products that we can then get rid of. So these antioxidant nutrients are functional components of color-rich foods that have extra health benefits for us,” explains Canadian dietitian, and sport nutrition and exercise specialist Beth Mansfield, based in Ottawa, (www.peakperformance.on.ca).
Antioxidant-rich foods aren’t shy—their commanding range of pigments have specific names and include orange and yellow carotenoids, found in cantaloupe, carrots and sweet potatoes and the blue and purple flavonoids that give color to grapes, cherries and blueberries. Peas and squash contain lutein; polyphenols show up in strawberries and tomatoes feature lycopene.
“We do not fully understand why color helps in disease prevention. Some of the colored pigments found in foods have been extensively researched and we understand part of the mechanisms involved in their role in protecting our health. For others we have evidence of associations between consumption and disease prevention, but the mechanism remains unclear. As with any science, it pays to look at the level of evidence,” says Inge.
Beth Mansfield recommends that you seriously review your eating habits, focusing on “healthy food rather than health food.”
Analyze your food choices, she says, select for high nutrient content, moderate portions, and concentrate on expanding your colors and not your waistline.
Ultimately, it’s better to rely on real foods rather than supplements.
“Should you take a supplement or two or three?” asks Mansfield. “Well….too much of any antioxidant (which happens when you take a concentrated dose in a supplement form) can actually make the antioxidants work as a pro oxidant, causing more damage. Also, some free radicals offer protection to us by attacking harmful bacteria and cancer cells in the body. So very high intakes of antioxidants could destroy or hinder these protective free radicals. Another reason for consuming antioxidants in foods rather than as supplements is that their ultimate use of the antioxidants in the body is influenced by what's eaten along with them. For instance, vegetables with orangey-red pigments need to be eaten along with fats or oils (e.g. oil dressing on salads or butter on steamed veggies) otherwise the body absorbs only a small fraction of them.”
Karen Inge points to current research regarding antioxidants and improved athletic performance, which might lead to the development of effective antioxidant supplements in the future.
“We know that there are many complex interactions going on within whole foods and it is not always possible to assign a beneficial effect to simply a pigment or single antioxidant. It’s likely that there are synergistic relationships occurring between the different antioxidants and nutrients. Take beta carotene as an example. Trials supplementing with this antioxidant have produced mixed and even dangerous results. This research has shown that you can’t always simply extract a component from food and achieve the same positive results as with eating the whole food.”
According to Inge, frozen foods prepared and stored correctly, like snap-frozen vegetables, appear to maintain vitamins and high levels of phytochemicals. Dry foods retain some phytochemicals but others will be lost or reduced during processing.
“Juices may not contain all the phytochemicals of the complete fruit or vegetable. In many fruits and vegetables phytochemicals are concentrated in the skin, pith and around the seeds. Food preparation methods that reduce or remove skin, pith and seeds will lower the total amount of phytochemical,” she points out, however, food preparation doesn’t always decrease the bioavailability of a phytochemical. Interestingly, the lycopene in tomatoes in better absorbed from cooked rather than raw tomatoes and even better when there is some olive oil in the meal eaten with the cooked tomato.
The Eating Rainbow:
Karen Inge focuses on colorful nutrition trends:
Kiwifruit: In a study conducted at RUTGERS, kiwifruit was shown to contain more vitamins and minerals than 27 of the most commonly eaten fruits. Recent research from Norway suggests that eating two to three kiwifruit a day can thin the blood, reduce blood clotting and decrease the risk of heart disease in healthy individuals. Even though
kiwifruit is an excellent source of the antioxidant vitamins E&C, folate and polyphenols,
there may be some other ‘magic ingredient’ in kiwifruit that helps to keep our
hearts healthy.
Citrus fruit: Reports indicate a compelling trend of protection against various types of
cancers from eating citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit. The
greatest protection is for cancers of the mouth, esophagus, larynx and stomach. Studies
suggest risk reductions of 40 to 50 per cent with the consumption of one to two
servings of citrus a day.
Blueberries: These delicious tasting berries nicknamed ‘brain berries’ may give your
mental powers and your general health a boost. They are rich in vitamin C and low in
calories. The blue color gives you a clue to the amazing array of antioxidants they
contain such as anthocyanins. Feeding mice (especially bred to be models for
Alzheimer’s disease) the equivalent of one cup of blueberries a day slowed down
the age-related loss in their mental capacity and reversed the effects of brain aging.
“The best strategy is to eat a wide variety of colored foods everyday. Try to include foods from each color group…. That way you will not miss out on any major group of phytochemicals,” says Inge. “…Substituting fruits and vegetables for higher energy-density foods will have many positive health benefits.”
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