In Living Color

Bright and beautiful fruits and veggies are not only a delight for the senses, but a necessity for optimum health.

By Julie Besonen

In a children's cooking class on New York's Lower East Side, a boy named Junior didn't hesitate to express himself when the topic turned to green foods. "That's nasty!" he yelled. No devotee of Dr. Seuss, Junior freaked at the mere idea of purple food, refusing to believe in anything so preposterous.

"Eggplant, grapes, cabbage," coached DeDe Lahman, one of the restaurateurs teaching the class. And Junior's excitement took a quieter turn as he was introduced to a whole rainbow of fruits and vegetables, his wide eyes showing his fascination with the new world of food opening up to him.

In the neighborhoods where Junior and his classmates live, monochromatic diets heavy on potato chips and white bread are the norm. In an effort to steer the kids toward something better, Lahman and her husband, chef Neil Kleinberg, host free classes for neighborhood children at their Clinton St. Baking & Restaurant Co. They've found that teaching healthful eating habits through the prism of color holds kids' attention better than a sermon on daily requirements or food pyramids. "If they start to put green, red, purple, orange, white, and yellow together, they have a full representation of vitamins," says Lahman. "After they eat the best fruit salad ever and the best green salad ever, we want them to notice that the beige packaged foods don't taste as good."

That's something we'd all do well to remember. While nutritionists continue to preach the value of eating as many as nine daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables, most of us stop at about three—and often they're the same apple, banana, and salad we have every day. Just by inviting a wider swath of the rainbow into our mouths—and with it the nutrients and antioxidants found in colorful fruits and veggies—we can help stave off a staggering variety of diseases, from macular degeneration and strokes to common forms of cancer and inflammation that can lead to heart disease.

Food Coloring

As you've no doubt heard, the antioxidants in foods perform an absolutely essential service: They neutralize the free radicals our bodies produce, which can damage cell membranes, cause inflammation, and render us susceptible to accelerated aging and other problems. Powerful as antioxidants are, though, they're also short-lived. "These antioxidants get into your bloodstream within an hour or two of consumption and most of them are gone in 12 to 24 hours," says Chuck Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center in Troy, Oregon, a clearinghouse of scientific research on organically produced foods. "That's why you not only need to eat your seven to nine servings of fruits and vegetables every day, but it's a really good idea to eat them throughout the day."

Variety is key because the pigments in food—the blue in blueberries, the red in strawberries—are actually phytonutrients. Each type helps prevent disease in a different way. David Heber, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition and the coauthor of What Color Is Your Diet? divides phytonutrients into seven color categories: red, red-purple, orange, orange-yellow, yellow-green, green, and white-green. The darker the hue, the more antioxidants. Heber suggests we eat something from each category every day. (The chart, adapted from Heber's book, shows which foods fit into each category and what health benefits they provide.) Nuts and herbs contain phytochemicals, too.

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