Color Your Meals Naturally Healthy

The value of eating fruits and vegetables has been recognized for generations. What’s changed is that researchers are increasingly bolstering folk wisdom with hard data, pinpointing specific chemicals that fight cancer, diabetes, heart disease, infection, obesity and a host of other ills.

We’ve moved beyond seeing fruits and vegetables as rich sources of essential vitamins and are now beginning to understand the roles and complexity of compounds such as antioxidants and the literally hundreds of phytochemicals that interact to influence health and nutrition.

Antioxidants are found in abundance in fruits and vegetables. Antioxidants protect the body against free radicals, harmful molecules linked to higher rates of heart disease, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease and a number of disorders related to aging. Free radicals are known to damage the lining of arteries and promote the formation of blood clots.

Vitamin C and beta carotene are good sources of antioxidants, and many Americans try to make up for a fast food diet with vitamins and minerals in pill form. Increasingly scientists are finding that it’s not enough to pop a pill containing vitamin supplements or even extracts of other substances known to be healthful.

It’s true than an orange is a rich source of vitamin C, but we now know that most fruits and vegetables go far beyond the vitamin benefit we associate with them. A pill might successfully isolate a single beneficial nutrient, but the true health benefit may lie in the complex of nutrients contained in the whole fruit. Pills just can’t substitute for eating fruits and vegetables as a source of nutrition.

The Women’s Antioxidant Cardiovascular Study followed 8,171 women over age 40 who either had diagnosed heart disease or risk factors for heart disease. The women took antioxidant vitamins and beta carotene in pill form. After 9.4 years researchers found that neither of the supplements reduced the risk of heart related events.

Despite the fact that these compounds are known to promote heart health when eaten in whole foods researchers concluded that in supplements they may not be able to capture the complex nutrients of the whole fruits and vegetables.

Both the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, large-scale studies that looked at the benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, found that those eating the most fruits and vegetables were longer lived and had lower risks of stroke, high blood pressure and heart disease.

Beyond Vitamins

A recent study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institutefound that men with prostate cancer who took more than seven multivitamin pills per week were 30 percent more likely to get an advanced and fatal form of the disease.

A large review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association [February 2008] found that people who took antioxidant vitamins (especially vitamins A, E, and beta carotene) were more likely to die than those not taking the pills. Although these findings may be controversial, what is certain is that pills don’t make up for a poor diet and are no substitute for the whole food.

Scientists have isolated a relatively small number of vitamins essential for good health, but when it comes to phytochemicals, things get far more complicated. There are literally thousands of phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables that provide more complex nutrients than the vitamins and minerals available in pill form.

Anthocyaninsare a type of phytochemical found in abundance in berries, especially blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and dark colored grapes. Scientists believe that anthocyanins have antioxidant properties that help prevent heart disease and protect the aging brain. In some studies, anthocyanins in grape cell culture showed promise in inhibiting the growth of cancer cells.

Animal studies have found that anthocyanins from very dark colored fruits and vegetables slowed the growth of colon cancer cells. There are 600 different anthocyanins that occur in a host of combinations–the likelihood that we could capture that complexity in pill form is remote.

But the complicated work has already been done for us; all we have to do is eat our fill of a variety of fruits and vegetables on a regular basis.

Fruits and vegetables are also a rich source of potassium. Potassium helps lower blood pressure and some studies suggest it can help prevent osteoporosis and kidney stones. The Institute of Medicine recommends that adults get at least 4,700 milligrams of potassium daily. That’s about twice as much as American adults now consume.

Another essential element that tends to be missing in the modern diet is fiber. Fiber helps with regularity, lowers the risk of heart disease and diabetes and is associated with a lower risk of some cancers.

Upping the fiber content of our diet can also help with weight control, a huge problem considering that some 30 percent of adults are obese, and almost two thirds are overweight.

Fruits and vegetables are high in fiber, are filling and have relatively few calories for their bulk. Switching to a diet that puts emphasis on eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat, fat and sweets makes it possible to eat a higher volume of food while taking in fewer calories.

Americans have long been advised to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables for good health. Numerous studies show that most of us fall short of that number. A new campaign by the Centers for Disease Control wants to increase that target to eight to ten servings per day. If that seems like a daunting task, think of ways you can add to your daily totals.

As well as a small glass of orange juice with your cereal in the morning, add banana and fresh berries to your cereal. Choose nuts and dried fruit for a mid-morning snack, have a bowl of vegetable soup for lunch or add lettuce and tomato to your sandwich. At dinner stir-fry some mixed vegetables and serve a salad. Fruit salad or sliced fruit make an easy dessert with ice cream or frozen yogurt.

And as you’re planning your meals it never has to get more complicated than mixing up the colors. Nutrition may be a complex science, but you can protect your health and that of your family by serving colorful, delicious meals that make fruits and vegetables the stars.