The rainbow diet

Red, yellow, green, white and blue... yes it reads like one of those rhymes we often used to chant when we were children but in fact this is the latest dietary plan being recommended by the Produce for Better Health Foundation in the United States. '5 A Day the Color Way'™ is the new message being promoted to encourage people of all ages to add a variety of fruits and vegetables to their diet

In recent years, the body of research identifying the benefits for health of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables has been substantial.

When we were children, our mothers very likely used to tell us: "Eat your vegetables to get your vitamins." And they were right.

More recently, nutritionists, doctors or home economics teachers have been advising: "Eat more plant foods - these add fibre to your diet and reduce the risk of constipation and other diseases." And they were right too!

Yet, emerging science is proving that fruits and vegetables have an even greater value: They are also rich in phytochemicals.

Phytochemicals are those natural substances which generally give fruits and vegetables their colour. They not only protect the plants themselves but research is showing they also provide important disease protection for humans.

From cancer to heart disease, aging to vision problems, consuming phytochemical-rich foods is being hailed as a simple way of helping to reduce the risk of suffering from various ailments and conditions.

Different fruits and vegetables contain different phytochemicals, so no one colour group has them all. In fact, there are five fruit and vegetable groups you need to include in your diet: blue/purple, green, white, yellow/orange and red (see table 1).

By eating regularly from each colour group, you can give yourself the widest health protection possible. But there are so many fruits and vegetables to choose from that eating a rainbow-coloured diet is easy. Moreover, phytochemicals work together with the vitamins, minerals and fibre in foods in a way that supplements could never replicate. So choose to eat the real thing, rather than relying on a few pills.

The rainbow way of thinking when planning your meals needs to complement a diet which is low in total fats and saturated fats (primarily found in animal sources of food) and high in complex carbohydrates (like wholegrain cereals, brown rice etc.).

This will help you avoid high blood cholesterol levels, heart disease and a number of cancers. It will also help you reach or maintain a healthy weight.

The good news is that you can actually supersize your fruit and vegetable dishes if you wish. (And you thought the word supersize should be struck out of your dictionary).

Add more colour to your salads by including various shades of green leafy vegetables, or slices of orange carrots or white mushrooms. Mix in different coloured vegetables with your pasta sauces - add a handful of frozen mixed vegetables or chopped dark green broccoli, purple eggplant, or green, yellow or red bell peppers.

Turn your fruit snack into a colourful fruit salad or fruit kebab and include an array of fruits as your ingredients. Be adventurous and combine fruits with savoury ingredients.

After all, is not that what our grandparents used to do? Grapes with pepper cheese, melon with crusty bread, sultanas in pumpkin or lampuki pie. Mmmm. We can really afford to supersize our fruit and vegetable intake because so few of us are meeting the minimum of five servings a day anyway (see tables 2 and 3).

Modern science is continually making impressive health advances, yet uncovering the multitude of health promoting and disease preventing benefits of fruits and vegetables is undeniably a meaningful discovery.

Putting yourself in a rainbow frame of mind when planning your or your family's diet is a simple strategy to adopt. You can even teach it to children.

Turn it into a game and let your family members tally how many different coloured fruits and vegetables they eat everyday. Colour is perhaps the easiest way to think about variety and variety is at the centre of a healthy diet.

suzanne.piscopo@um.edu.mt

More information may be obtained from www.5aday.com; www.5aday.gov; www.nejm.org; or e-mail suzanne.piscopo@um.edu.mt

Ms Piscopo is home economics lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Malta