Eat Your Colors!
By Marcia Zimmerman, C.N.
In any language, the message is the same. A colorful diet confers health and longevity. Now, the US Department of Health and Human Services has gotten the message – at least some of it.
The New Food Pyramid
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, published in January and graphically represented in the April 19 release of a revised food pyramid, uses color to designate each of five food categories that make up a healthy diet. MyPyramid.gov uses vertical colored sections of varying widths to indicate relative amounts of the five food categories that you should eat. For example, vegetables have a wider section than meats, indicating that you should consume more vegetables than meat. Another improvement in the new pyramid is listing everyday measures for food, such as cups and ounces, instead of the number of servings. MyPyramid includes a stick-figure climbing stairs to emphasize the need for physical activity. The new pyramid is more visually appealing than the old version but still emphasizes consumption of grains, fruits, and vegetables with limited meats, oils and fat – advice that few Americans have followed.
Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, characterized the new pyramid as only a modest improvement over the 1992 symbol and criticized the effort for not doing enough to minimize intake of fat-and calorie-laden junk food. More disdainful experts accuse the HHS of caving into food industry interests by not emphasizing how unhealthy most processed foods really are and advising people to eliminate them. Ms Wootan also points out that the government has dodged the politically difficult message of encouraging Americans to eat less.
In response, HHS officials contend the new pyramid is a guide to healthy eating, not a weight loss plan. They emphasize the pyramid can be customized to meet individual need by using their website, www.mypyramid.gov to key in gender, age, weight, and activity level to obtain optimum daily servings. Yet, this is of little help to those who do not have access to the Internet – many of whom are clinically obese and need a balanced weight loss regimen. Moreover, the government totally missed the boat by not identifying foods by their natural pigments, which is the perfect way to get people to eat a more diverse and antioxidant-rich diet. Instead, HHS merely assigned arbitrary colors to food groups.
What Color-Coded Eating Really Means
The idea of color-coded eating didn’t originate with me, but I have written extensively on the subject. My book Eat Your Colors was published in 2001 and has been translated into six languages. I have written numerous articles on the medicinal properties of phytochemicals, which are the natural pigments in food. I updated the wisdom of choosing foods by color in The Anti-Aging Solution: 5 Simple Steps to Looking and Feeling Young, which was published in 2004. My newest book, 7-Color Cuisine: a Nutrition Guide and Cookbook will be published in November 2005 and it emphasizes counting colors – not calories. In my 7-color plan, you eat seven colors a day – red, orange, yellow, purple, green, tan and creamy white. When you eat seven colors a day, you access all the major categories of phytonutrients and benefit from their profound healing effects.
Unfortunately, this point was totally missed by the HHS pyramid. While the Dietary Guidelines acknowledge there are hundreds of phytonutrients and zoonutrients in foods that promote health and prevent disease – from scientific research that dates back to the early 1980’s – HHS has chosen to save this information for future pyramid revisions. That’s because most phytonutrients and zoonutrients still aren’t listed in the USDA nutrient database. Consequently, the HHS food pyramid uses colors that bear no relationship to the foods they represent. Orange designates grains, vegetables are green, fruits are red, dairy products are blue, and purple is for meat and beans.
In my 7-Color Cuisine plan, orange, red, yellow, green, and blue/purple include all fruits, vegetables and spices that are these colors. Grains, nuts and legumes are tan, which is their natural color, and dairy, oils, fish and poultry are creamy white. This schematic allows people to simply color their palette each day – not try to remember how many cups or ounces from each category they need to eat. In addition, 7-Color Cuisine uses a modular approach to meal planning that helps people who want to eat better, but don’t know where to begin.
What About Supplements?
The Dietary Guidelines, which are revised every five years, emphasize intake of certain vitamins and minerals. These include vitamins A, C, D, E, folic acid, vitamin B-12, calcium, magnesium, iron and potassium. However, the premise of the Dietary Guidelines is that these nutrients should be consumed from foods, unless there is a special need for amounts not normally found in foods. The idea is that food supplies a vast array of phytonutrients and other factors that cannot possibly be supplemented. And while this can’t be disputed, it has also been proven that the majority of Americans are not getting the suggested daily intake of folic acid, vitamin B-12, other B vitamins, vitamins A, C, D, E, and the minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and zinc. Additionally, concentrated amounts of specific phytonutrients and semi-vitamins may aid in alleviating certain conditions or overcoming depletion by medications.
Consequently, most nutrition experts agree that adding a daily multiple vitamin and mineral formula makes good sense. Additional metabolic balancing can be achieved with calcium and magnesium formulas – in many cases with a reverse ratio of magnesium to calcium. Phytonutrient concentrates such as lutein, lycopene, veggie carotenoids and grape seed extract may be included in the formula for additional support
A definitive guide for supplements can be found in my latest book, 7-Synndrome Healing- Supplement Essentials for Mind and Body. I have collaborated in this book-writing venture with first-time author Jayson Kroner. The book is an authoritative guide that contains information on over 150 vitamins, minerals and herbs. You will find several I will be including excerpts from the book in my Zimmerman Files that are archived on the Natural Health Research Institute website; http://www.naturalhealthresearch.org/nhri/?page_id=320 upcoming Zimmerman Files. You might also find the complete 2005 Dietary Guidelines helpful. The book is available through Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_11?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=marcia+zimmerman&sprefix=marcia+zimm or www.now-2-U.com. The new pyramid can be found at http://www.mypyramid.gov.