Colour Your Diet

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THE secret to good health is a colourful diet. Beyond vitamins and minerals, colourful fruits and vegetables will give us other plant nutrients that are important to maintaining our health and well-being.

Why are colours important?
A lot of the plant nutrients or phytonutrients that are good for us also produce bright colours in vegetables and fruits. Different phytonutrients protect our body and improve our health in different ways – that’s why we say ‘Colour Your Diet’ by eating a variety of fruits and vegetables every day.

What are phytonutrients?
Phyto means ‘plant’, and phytonutrients are, to put it simply, nutrients that come from plants. Phytonutrients (also referred to as phytochemicals) are turning out to be quite an important discovery, albeit a fairly recent one. It is a known fact that people who eat a lot of vegetables and fruits are healthier in many ways. This has been attributed to the rich vitamins and minerals found in fruits and vegetables – but that is only part of the story. It turns out there are many substances, numbering up to thousands, in the fruits and vegetables that have profound benefits on human health.

How do phytonutrients help us?
In plants, fruits and vegetables, phytonutrients form a protective shield to guard them against the environment. Phytonutrients also defend plants, fruits and vegetables against diseases. It has been revealed that phytonutrients are able to provide the similar protection for the human body. They are able to repair damages to cells, help build our immune system and act as antioxidants.

What are antioxidants?
All of the work our cells do to keep our bodies going takes place in chemical reactions. However, some of the reactions that occur with oxygen inevitably create unstable byproducts called ‘free radicals’. In excess, free radicals can interact with other molecules in the cell membrane or other parts of the cell, such as the DNA, and cause damage.

Antioxidants can counteract free radicals and protect the cells from damage. Eating food that contains high amounts of antioxidants may reduce risk of diseases such as cancer, which happens partly from damaged cell DNA, and heart disease, which happens partly because of cholesterol becoming oxidised and sticking to arteries. Besides phytonutrients, other examples of antioxidants are vitamins C and E, and the mineral selenium.

What do PHYTONUTRIENTS do?

More and more research points to the fact that nearly all of our ‘modern’ age-related diseases are linked to our diet. Studies have validated the age-old adage that good food is good for you. So eat your veggies fresh, but more importantly, don’t eat too much of the same thing. Variety is key when it comes to adding more colours to your diet.

Thousands of phytonutrients have been isolated and each provides specific nutritional properties and health benefits. Phytonutrients are, in most cases, the actual pigments that give a fruit or vegetable its colour, and can be categorised into groups such as flavonoids, isoflavones, aromatics, carotenoids, etc. Nearly all are antioxidants and most of them play a part in enhancing our health.

Carotenoids

This group of phytonutrients are the pigments found in bright yellow, orange and red plants. Familiar names such as beta carotene, lutein and lycopene are part of this group. Carotenoids have antioxidant properties and most have been show to protect specific types of tissue or cells from damage from free radicals.

Limonoids

This is a sub-group of terpenes, the same group that contains carotenoids, limonoids, etc. Limonoids are found most often in citrus fruit peels, and seem to be specific to protecting lung tissue.

Phytosterols

Found in abundance in the seeds of green and yellow vegetables such as squash or pumpkin, phytosterols block the uptake of cholesterol in the intestines. This helps to cholesterol at lower levels.

Phenols

Phenols are the pigments that give blueberries, grapes, bilberries and other blue and violet fruits their colour. There have been numerous studies for decades on the disease preventive properties of phenols.

Flavonoids

There are well over 1500 flavonoids found in a wide variety of plants and herbs. The sheer quantity and the varied sources made it impossible to list down all the benefits that can be derived from flavonoids. Suffice to say, their biologic activity includes action against allergies, inflammation, free radicals, hepatotoxins, platelet aggregation, microbes, ulcers, viruses and even tumours.

Isoflavones

Isoflavones are a phytonutrient subclass found in beans and legumes. They deserve special mention because they appear to the block tumour growth.

Health Benefits of PHYTONUTRIENTS

The benefits of phytonutrients can be seen in many areas. For example, phytonutrients are why carrots are good for your eyesight because the carotenoids have proven beneficial in preventing and even reversing the leading causes of age-related blindness; eating more vegetables can help you grow strong bones, as calcium is more readily absorbed thanks to the action of phytonutrients found in vegetables and fruits; and orange juice is good for cold as limonoids help heal and protect lung tissue.

Phytonutrients benefit health by:

Serving as antioxidants

Enhancing immune response

Enhancing cell-to-cell communication

Converting to vitamin A (beta-carotene is metabolized to vitamin A)

Causing cancer cells to apoptosis or die

Repairing DNA damage caused by smoking and other toxic exposures

Detoxifying carcinogens through the activation of cytocrome P450 and phase 11 enzyme systems

Researching Phytonutrients

Phytonutrient research is experiencing remarkable growth. There have been population studies that linked fruit and vegetable consumption to decreasing the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease and specific cancers. It is anticipated that there will be more specific information on phytonutrient consumption and human health available will be forthcoming in the near future. Examples of studies that  increasing consumption of phytonutrient-rich foods including fruits, vegetables, grains and teas is an effective strategy for reducing risk of cancer and heart disease are as follows:

• Evidence that fruit and vegetable consumption protects human health is accumulating from large population (epidemiological) studies, human feeding studies, and cell culture studies. Listed below are a few selected population studies from the literature linking fruit and vegetable consumption to health. For an excellent review concerning vegetables, fruit, and cancer prevention, see Steinmetz and Potter, Journal of the American Dietetic Association 1996; vol 96: pp 1027.
• Fruit and vegetable consumption has been linked to decreased risk of both hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke. Each increment of three daily servings of fruits and vegetables equated to a 22% decrease in risk of stroke, including transient ischemic attack. (Gillman et al. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1995; vol 273; pp 1113).
•  Elderly men whose intake of dark green and deep yellow vegetables put them in the highest quartile for consumption of these vegetables had about a 46% decrease in risk for heart disease relative to men who ranked in the lowest quartile. Men in the highest quintile had about a 70% lower risk of cancer than did their counterparts in the lowest quintile. The differences in vegetable consumption between high and low intake rankings were not striking. Men in the highest quartile or quintile consumed more than two (>2.05 and >2.2) servings of dark green or deep yellow vegetables a day; those in the lowest quartile or quintile consumed less than one serving daily (<0.8 and <0.7). This suggests that small, consistent changes in vegetable consumption can make important changes in health outcomes (Gaziano et al. Annals of Epidemiology 1995; vol 5: pp 255 and Colditz et al. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1985; vol 41: pp 32).

Sources of Phytonutrients

What are the examples of phytonutrients and antioxidants-rich food?
Examples of food highest in antioxidants contents are: tea, berries, plums (and prunes), oranges, purple grapes (and raisins), cherries, kiwi fruit, pink grapefruit, dark green leafies like spinach and kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, beets, tomatoes, and red pepper.

How many servings of fruits and vegetables should we eat?
Current recommendations are 9-13 servings per day, and there is evidence that more is better.

What constitutes as a serving?

Fruits One medium-sized piece of fruit, ¾ cup juice, ½ cup cut-up fruit, or ¼ cup of dried fruit are generally recommended as a serving.
For vegetables 1 cup of raw leafy vegetables or ½ cup of other vegetables are considered a serving. But take note! Many vegetables, especially leaves, ‘collapse’ when cooking. For example, it takes six cups of cooked spinach to make one cup of raw spinach! This should be taken into consideration when deciding on serving sizes, and this is also a good indication that we should eat larger servings of vegetables when raw, especially leafy ones.

NOTE:

Cooking can lead to phytonutrient losses!

Phytonutrients are plant chemicals with disease-preventing properties. Cooking alters their structure and bioavailability. While in most cases it gets reduced, it is proven that there are positive transformations, too: for example, lycopene is absorbed better from cooked tomatoes than from raw. (Critical Reviews in Biotechnology, 2001, vol. 21, no. 1).

How can we ensure we are eating the right amount of fruits and vegetables to meet the recommended daily intake?

One simple way is to divide your food into colour groups. Try to eat 1 to 2 servings of each colour every day.
To make it more interesting, turn it into a challenge for yourself, your friends and your customers. Eat 1 to 2 servings of fruits and vegetables from each colour - Green, White, Red, Blue/Purple and Yellow/Orange.
Can you do it for 1, 2, 3 or 5 days? How about for a week, or a month?

Colour Your Diet with Supplementation

As much as there have been studies on the importance of eating a balanced diet, there have been equally as many research that proves that we cannot get all the nutrition we need from the food we eat alone.

These missing nutrients turn into nutritional gaps, which in turn can lead to an increased risk of degenerative diseases. Similarly, we are not eating enough fruits and vegetables like the recommended 9-13  servings a day to get enough phytonutrients. Because inevitably, certain food choices we make tilts the scale towards more protein, fats and carbohydrates instead of taking more fruits and vegetables. Even some fast food choices we make give us more chunks of meat as compared to salads or fruits .

Therefore, it only makes sense to supplement in order to reduce the nutritional and phytonutrient gaps from our diets.

Tips on Choosing Supplements to Colour Your Diet

Make sure the source is from the human food chain
Studies of indigenous people from all over the world prove the amazing health benefits of specific vitamins, minerals and other dietary nutrients. And these studies are always based on whole foods that human beings have been consuming for thousands of years.

Buy only supplements that are naturally balanced
Nature balances all our nutrients in whole food families. For instance, there isn’t one single fruit or vegetable in the human food chain that contains only isolated vitamin C. Foods with vitamin C always include the entire naturally balanced bioflavonoid family. And that’s what you need in order to look and feel your best.

By creating a nutritional imbalance, supplements that provide only one or more isolates, such as vitamin C, B6, d-alpha tocopherol, niacin, glutamine, beta-carotene or lutein can actually deplete your body of what it really needs to stay strong and healthy. Long-term consumption of isolates causes deficiencies that lead to degenerative disease.s That’s why natural balance is so important. It is important to ensure when supplementing to choose supplements that include sources which are close to real foods and that which provide vitamins and minerals with plants or fruits to give added nutritional support. For example, a supplement that provides both vitamin C from acerola cherries and bioflavonoids that come from lemons, as these bioflavonoids and vitamin C have complementary functions beneficial for optimal health.

Your supplements should be guaranteed safe for consumption
There are things you need to know about your supplements. Be sure to ask these questions: Are the sources free of pesticides? Will the company guarantee in writing that they contain NO unwanted chemicals? Or, GMOs (genetically modified organisms)? Are the soybeans used in the protein supplement GMO-free?