Fruits, vegetables color nutrition for health benefits

May 14, 2002
By Jane Brody
Personal Health
Colorize your diet. That is the latest advice from nutrition experts who have studied the health-promoting properties of colorful fruits and vegetables available.
Two recently published books – “What Color Is Your Diet?” (Regan Books, $25), by Dr. David Heber, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California, Los Angeles, with Susan Bowerman, a dietitian, and “The Color Code” (Hyperion, $22.95), by Dr. James A. Joseph, Dr. Daniel A. Nadeau and Anne Underwood – emphasize the importance of eating more fruits and vegetables and the need to choose broadly among richly colored options.
This is not hard to do, and the payoff in health and weight can be considerable. Most fruits and vegetables are low in fat, replete with filling fiber and loaded with natural chemicals that help protect against heart disease, cancer and age-related cognitive decline, cataracts and macular degeneration.
Fruits and vegetables come closer than any other category of food to behaving like a fountain of youth. Each is packed with plant-based chemicals, or phytonutrients, that can help to prevent or even reverse chronic, debilitating and deadly diseases.
For a detailed account of the protective chemicals of fruits and vegetables and how these chemicals can help you as well as the plants they come in, consult “The Color Code.” This book and “What Color Is Your Diet?” also provide tempting recipes to encourage an increased intake of produce, which should add up to nine or 10 servings a day.
But merely counting servings may not be adequate if, these experts say, you miss major color categories.
“Pigment power” is what it is all about, say the authors of “The Color Code,” who divide fruits and vegetables into four color groups: red, orange-yellow, green and blue-purple, each with a set of beneficial phytonutrients. Heber groups them into seven color categories:
· Red, including tomatoes (especially cooked tomato products), pink grapefruit and watermelon, which are rich in the carotenoid lycopene, a potent scavenger of gene-damaging free radicals that seems to protect against prostate cancer as well as heart and lung disease.
· Red/purple, including red and blue grapes, blueberries, strawberries, beets, eggplant, red cabbage, red peppers, plums and red apples, which are loaded with powerful antioxidants believed to delay cellular aging and help the heart by blocking the formation of blood clots. Red wine is in this category.
· Orange, including carrots, mangoes, cantaloupe, winter squash and sweet potatoes, rich in the cancer-fighter alpha carotene, along with beta carotene that protects the skin against free-radical damage and promotes repair of damaged DNA.
· Orange/yellow, including oranges, peaches, papaya and nectarines, which provide beta cryptothanxin, which supports intracellular communication and may help prevent heart disease.
· Yellow/green, including spinach, collards, corn, green peas, avocado and honeydew, which are sources of the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin. These are strongly linked to a reduced risk of cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.
· Green, including broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale and bok choy. These are rich in cancer-blocking chemicals that inhibit the action of carcinogens.
· White/green, including garlic, onions, leeks, celery, asparagus, pears and green grapes. The onion family contains allicin, which has anti-tumor properties. White wine is in this category.
The trick is to include as many plant-based colors in your daily diet as possible. In many cases, that means eating the colorful skins, the richest sources of protective phytonutrients, along with the paler flesh. So try to avoid peeling foods like apples, peaches and eggplant lest you lose their most concentrated source of beneficial chemicals.

Copyright 2002
The Orange County Register