Making healthy, colorful foods a lifestyle for nutrition and good eating.
Why Choose Foods by Color?
Nature's healing colors abound in fruits, vegetables, whole grains,
legumes, and healthy oils. The colors are actually pigments that
come from a special class of chemicals known as phytonutrients.
When you eat foods of a particular color, you access their particular
healing powers. Scientists are just now beginning to un-
derstand the medicinal impacts of phytonutrients and why eating
fruits and vegetables may be our greatest preventive tool against
conditions such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. For
many centuries traditional healers have taught color-coded eating
as essential for maintaining health, vitality, and long life. From
this foundation in traditional medicine and modern scientific
investigation, 7-Color Cuisine has emerged.
Eat 7 Colors a Day
The five bright fruit and vegetable colors of red, orange, yellow,
green, blue–violet–purple, plus the tan earth tones of grains and
legumes, reveal the phytonutrient pedigrees of those foods. Animal
foods, including dairy, eggs, fish, and poultry, are creamy white in
color and contain healing nutrients called zoonutrients. 7-Color
Cuisine: Making Healthy, Colorful Foods a Lifestyle for Nutrition
and Good Eating guides you to select foods based on their colors
and yielding an array of phytonutrients and zoonutrients that
research shows may help fight disease, help you lose weight,
derail the aging process, and sharpen your wits. The cookbook
integrates planning, buying, storing, and preparing brightly colored
foods that heal. And the 7-Color system aims to heighten your
awareness of how delicious and satisfying well-prepared good
food really can be.
Most nutrition and diet regimens emphasize the composition of
food, enumerating how many calories a particular food or recipe
contains and its carbohydrate, fat, fiber, and protein content. Although
these numbers are important and are included with every
recipe in this cookbook, the emphasis in the 7-Color system is
on eating the right foods and enjoying them. By unlocking the
keys to the 7-Color plan, you'll accomplish your dietary goals
without having to play the numbers game.
The plan begins with basics on how phytonutrients protect
you and why brightly colored foods are the best food choices to
help you look and feel your best. Each color has its own category
of protective phytonutrients, and the health benefits of each
category are fully explained. Foods making up the category are
listed as top picks, and you are encouraged to eat as many different
selections as possible. The amount of each color you should
eat is also given in detailed, thirty-day meal plans, shopping
tips, and recipes for both warm and cool weather. You'll also
find a pantry management section to help you track staples and
eliminate high-calorie and less-nutritious items. Once you learn
the 7-Color plan, you'll be able to mix and match recipes for an
endless variety of delicious meals.
Eat Less, Maintain Optimal Weight, and Feel Better
7-Color Cuisine features foods that are fresh and seasonal. They're
also nutrient-dense, meaning that they come packaged as nature
intended, with hundreds of different beneficial nutrients. Nothing
has been removed or processed out of these foods, so they retain
natural digestive enzymes which can help maintain an optimum
body balance of acid and alkaline (pH). Learning which foods to
avoid and why their consumption can sabotage weight loss and
accelerate aging, you'll also feel more satisfied and less inclined to
snack. With this system, followers have reported drastic improvements
to digestive problems, bloating, and water retention. Many
say they have great success maintaining optimal weight and that
such maladies as aching joints, skin problems, fatigue, low sex
drive, and reduced cognitive function have improved.
This plan is high in protein, much of it from vegetables and
legumes, and naturally low in processed carbohydrates and saturated
fat, because the emphasis is on vegetables, fruits, whole grains,
legumes, lean protein, and healthy oils. As we grow older, we need
more protein-rich foods to meet the body's maintenance and repair
needs. We also need to choose friendly oils over saturated fats to
maintain normal cellular and brain function. The 7-Color plan
is so easy to follow that you don't have to wonder about how to
implement a healthier dietary regimen. It is a healthier regime,
although it doesn't feel like one. And yet the plan will be unique
to you because you will be learning a system that you can adjust
to meet your personal goals.
All of the menus and recipes here have been analyzed carefully
to make sure they adhere to the latest nutrition recommendations
and dietary guidelines. My plan is based on and supported
by the latest scientific findings, not the latest food fads. I know
the sound nutritional information contained in 7-Color Cuisine:
Making Healthy, Colorful Foods a Lifestyle for Nutrition and Good
Eating will endure for a lifetime of more enjoyable and nutritious
meals.
Excerpted from
7-Color Cuisine: Making healthy, colorful foods a lifestyle for nutrition and good eating by Marcia Zimmerman, M.D. (
Penmarin Books, February 2006).
