Easy New Year's Resolution: Eat the Rainbow
A Vegan Health Article from All-Creatures.org

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From Robert Cohen, NotMilk.com
December 2014

Eat foods of color. The perfect color can be found exactly in the middle of our rainbow, the color green. There is a pot of gold and jewels within that rainbow, and these treasures so contained can be cashed in to purchase good health.

Somewhere, over the rainbow, Way up tall, There's a land where they've never heard of cholesterol.
- Allan Sherman

Finally. The last day of 2014! This year, the average person ate 100 pounds of fruit, 100 pounds of vegetables, and 1800 pounds of garbage. Can you resolve to reverse your menu by keeping the hard-to-digest (and challenging to ignore) garbage to a minimum?
  
Eat a rainbow tomorrow and every day of 2015.
  
Shining white light through a prism, one is instantly blessed with the hidden beauty and complex nature of our universe. A pure white beam of light reveals its inner essence.
  
Most people can name the seven visible colors of the rainbow's spectrum. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Of course, there are two other colors, often forgotten, but always present, ultraviolet and infra-red.
  
Animals and insects feel these colors. Plants sense them, too. While we lack the same receptors and are blind to their existence, our handicap cannot negate their influence.
  
The ultras and infras of plants are magical substances, indeed! They include plant chemicals, or phyto chemicals, such as isoflavones and bioflavinoids. Science teaches us that plants protect themselves from attack with their own secretions and chemical messengers. Vegetables repel insects who would eat them, and blossoms attract other insects with a perfume so that their pollen can be spread  and their species self-propagate. Plants protect themselves from too much heat, or cold, or wind, or too much moisture, maintaining their own good health with their specialized hormones. Plants can cure their own sicknesses and cancers by secreting and bathing themselves with these enchanted essences.
  
When we eat the plants, we are similarly protected. Modern science has confirmed the centuries-old traditions and lore from cultures that refined the sacred techniques of using foods as medicine.
  
TODAY'S PERFECT RAINBOW
  
Eat foods of color. The perfect color can be found exactly in the middle of our rainbow, the color green. There is a pot of gold and jewels within that rainbow, and these treasures so contained can be cashed in to purchase good health.
  
Eat Green For Wellness.
  
In the 1980s, scientists first began to explore how phytochemicals prevent cancers. A great amount of emphasis was placed upon the fruits and vegetables that contain vibrant colors. The best known of these wonder drugs was recognized as beta carotene. That's what gives carrots their bright orange hue.
  
In the 1990s, scientists at the University of Minnesota (Steinmetz, et. al.) categorized different groups of fruits and vegetables demonstrating life giving, disease fighting qualities. In doing so, they defined some of those magic colors, and the phytochemicals so contained within those pigments.  
  
The violet, indigo and blues of the plant kingdom include phenols and dithiolthiolnines contained in eggplant, cruciferous vegetables, grapes, plums, and grains.
  
Eat onions and shallots, leeks, scallions and garlic for cancer-fighting alliums. Those green leafy vegetables contain flavonoids, and inositol is found in beans. Green fruits and veggies contain phenols, and plant sterols, protease inhibitors and saponins.
  
Yellow limonines contained in citrus fruit and squash have also been identified as cancer fighters, as have the orange carotines in carrots, and my all-time favorite vitamin pill, the cantaloupe. bBalancing out the rainbow's spectrum would be the red phenols in peppers, radishes, and tomatoes.
  
Tens of thousands of unique substances have been identified, and there are still plant hormones and enzymes yet to be identified.
  
Remarkably, the one plant containing the greatest amount of these phytochemicals is the soybean. Soybeans contain coumarins, flavonoids, inositol, isoflavones, lignans, phenols, plant sterols, protease inhibitors, saponins, and Omega 3 and Omega 6 oils.
  
For the best of health, make it your resolution to eat a rainbow every day during the coming year!
  
Today's column is a re-run of last year's column while I explore compete Reticular Activating Systemic Rest & Relaxation!

Leroy bet me I couldn't find a pot of gold at the end, and I told him that was a stupid bet because the rainbow was enough.
- Rita Mae Brown

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All-Creatures.org Health Position and Disclaimer

We began this archive as a means of assisting our visitors in answering many of their health and diet questions, and in encouraging them to take a pro-active part in their own health. We believe the articles and information contained herein are true, but are not presenting them as advice. We, personally, have found that a whole food vegan diet has helped our own health, and simply wish to share with others the things we have found. Each of us must make our own decisions, for it's our own body. If you have a health problem, see your own physician.