Eating across the color spectrum helps keep your nutrients in balance
by Katherine Jamieson
Have you ever wondered why blue M&Ms were the last ones to show up, long after red, green, yellow and brown had been melting in your mouth, not in your hand, for years? Until the advent of artificial colorings and flavorings, blue foods just didn’t seem right to most people, and for good reason: other than blueberries and blue-purple potatoes, there are very few naturally occurring blue foods on this planet. For our ancestors, blue was a color warning—it indicated something that might be harmful, perhaps lethal. Though we’re rarely foraging for food these days, we carry the same food color biases and generally eat in accordance with them, whether we’re aware of it or not.
Commercial marketing has made our once adaptive methods of using color to determine the health value of foods actually work against us. Bright colors would have represented fresh, nutritious foods to our ancestors, but these days the vast array of brightly colored “fruit” drinks, candies and snacks marketed heavily to children are anything but healthy. What most people may not realize is that even foods we think of as natural are often tampered with to make them more appealing. Oranges very likely have their color enhanced to mask natural skin discolorations, and farmed salmon would be paler than trout were it not for food coloring. Much of what we see in a supermarket, particularly packaged and processed food, is “dolled-up” with synthetic colorings and dyes.
You’re always safer with organic foods, but since you’ll still need nutritional balance, follow the colors of ancient and modern wisdom.
Eat with the Rainbow
The most natural and effective way to balance your diet is to eat a broad range of naturally multicolored foods. The reasoning behind this is simple: the various colors indicate the presence of different vitamins and minerals. Eating the full spectrum guarantees you’ll get a wide range of nutrients. This may seem simple, but the general tendency is to gravitate toward certain colored meals—often all white or brown. A mental, pre-dinner scan of your plate to see if more than two colors are represented will tell you what you need to add. This is why restaurants often garnish with sprigs of kale or parsley, or wedges of cantaloupe. Even if people don’t eat them, their vibrant color adds life to an otherwise monochromatic presentation.
Beware Green Ketchup
When Heinz introduced green ketchup in 2002, nobody knew how it would be received. Ultimately it delivered the highest increase in sales in the brand’s history. Kids, a major consumer of ketchup, led the way in public acceptance of this strangely colored tomato product. It’s the same phenomenon that got blue M&Ms into those little brown bags—we’ve become accustomed to unnatural coloring. The American food industry uses thousands of tons of food color per year. Though we know logically that Twizzlers don’t grow bright red and ripe on the vine, they mimic our idea of what fresh fruits and vegetables should look like, and trick us into desiring them.
According to Dr. Murray Clarke, a holistic pediatrician who’s been practicing in Santa Monica for the past 20 years, the risks of these foods are more serious than you might imagine. “If we just look at the commonly seen yellow # 5 and red # 3, we can see that each separate artificial food coloring is actually a combination of several individual chemicals,” he explained. “When a child eats a food or drink that contains two or three artificial colorings, that child is instantly consuming 30 to 50 different chemicals.” These chemicals may cause brain toxicity and damage, he added, which can result in hyperactivity, learning disorders, depression and behavioral problems.
Clarke cited an April 2008 study on artificial food coloring conducted by the U.K.’s Southhampton University, which led to conclusions that six artificial food colorings can cause more damage to children’s brains than lead in gasoline.
“The degree to which each individual child will be affected by these chemicals will depend on their current state of health, family predispositions, nutritional status and immune strength,” said Clarke. “However, there is no doubt that these substances are toxic and that they do not belong in any child’s body or brain.”
Celebrate the Wabi Sabi
The Japanese philosophy of wabi sabi celebrates the beauty of imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness. It appreciates that which is modest and humble, as well as unconventional. Conventional supermarkets present us with produce that appears “perfect,” presenting few of the variations found in nature. However, if you’ve traveled to other countries or shopped at a farmers market, you’re well aware that unenhanced fruits and vegetables can look quite different: oranges may have a green tinge; carrots may be skinny, or bent at strange angles.
Organic foods are less likely to be uniform in color and appearance. A wabi sabi attitude helps us to appreciate that these foods are still beautiful, perhaps even more so by reason of their imperfections. Even if your apple isn’t completely red, you can rest assured that it isn’t wearing “makeup,” like much of the produce from conventional grocery stores.
Adopt the Chinese Perspective
Chinese medicine recommends eating across the color spectrum. In the Five Elements philosophy, foods are associated with different elements (water, wood, earth, fire and metal), seasons, colors, flavors, directions, organ systems and environmental influences. For instance, green/blue foods are typically linked to the wood element and relate to liver and gallbladder function; red foods are associated with fire energy and connected to the heart and small intestine; and yellow foods are associated with the earth element and stomach, spleen and pancreas.
Five elements can be a helpful way of thinking about balancing your diet, with the guidance of a somewhat different set of criteria. Many acupuncturists are well versed in nutritional Five Elements theory.
Let There Be Light
We perceive the world through colors, and naturally appreciate blooming flowers and a rainbow in the sky. Color is closely related to the appeal of various foods, and just the sight of food fires neurons in the hypothalamus. Multicolored meals are not only more healthful, their pleasing aesthetic actually helps you appreciate and enjoy your food more. Studies of people eating under different conditions show that those who eat in the dark report not enjoying the food as much when they can’t see it, so if you want romantic ambience, be sure to light enough candles that you can really see what’s on your plate. An attractive, multicolored meal is not only good for your health and digestion, it also brings you pleasure.
