Eat the Rainbow

I know veggies may not seem like the most appealing of foods to you, or perhaps you may still be traumatized by your parents forcing you to eat boiled Brussels Sprouts as a child, but I honestly can't get enough of vegetables, I know that my sound crazy, but hear me out!

I've always loved vegetables, as I find that I thrive best when I include a huge array in my diet. I feel better, look better, and lets face it, I poop better too. Choosing a wide variety of different plant based foods is so important for our overall health. You've heard the expression eat the rainbow...well this expression has a lot of truth behind.

Vegetables are vital for our well-being and survival. They should be the primary component of everyone's diet as vegetables have an incredible life force, infact the Latin word for Vegetable is 'Vegetare', meaning 'to enlivin' or 'animate'.

Most vegetables have a high water content, and are abundant in necessary vitamins and minerals vital for our health. Vegetables give us crucial carbohydrates with a decent amount of soluble and insoluble fibre. Many of these fibres feed the good bacteria in our gut helping to balance out our microbiome and provide a better terrain for our gut to keep us healthy, produce important hormones and breakdown and absorb nutrients from our foods.

The fact is, most of us are not getting enough colourful fruits and veggies into our diet. Interestingly these vibrant colours are directly correlated with their nutrient content, in fact the more colourful and vibrant the food, the higher antioxidant and nutrient content.

Most of the colour-giving substances in food, called pigments give foods their vibrant colours for instance chlorophyll is what gives green foods their bright green colour. Chlorophyll is an amazing phytonutrient for detoxification and cleansing the digesting tract. It can aid with bad breathe, liver health, detoxification and overall digestive cleansing. Chlorophyll is highest in deep green foods such as spinach, chollard, spirulina, chlorella, alfalfa, parsley and brocolli.

Many of the yellow, orange, and even red plant foods can attribute their vibrant colours to the amazing carotenoid pigment. Carotenoids are incredibly powerful antioxidants which are highly anti-cancerous and help to combat free radicals (single oxygen atoms that can damage cells), caused by stress by encouranging healthy cell turnover. Some carotenoids are converted in the body to vitamin A which are vital for eye health, so there is some truth in the old wives tale that carrots help you see in the dark.

There are literally 10's of thousands of phytonutrients that have been discovered- and i'm sure many more that have yet to be discovered. These really are the building blocks of our health, so next time you bite into an apple, think about the tiny building blocks that make up that apple and how your gut and body will thank you for it!

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