Eat the rainbow

In my journey to improve my fitness, I have done a lot of reading and talked to a few experts. One of these was a really cool sports nutritionist who loved fixing the eating habits people who played a lot of sport, but were clueless about food. That was certainly myself! Of all the advice she gave me, one thing she said to me stuck out the most. That is, I should ‘eat the rainbow.’

I have already written about carbs and how we should eat coloured carbs, rather than white ones. This was part of what she was trying to get across. The other was in the veggies that we eat.  She kept writing me these eating plans with ‘100g of veggies’ or ‘salad’ in them and I kept asking which veggies and what salad!

In the end, she gave me a list of about 40 veggies that I could just pick and choose from, but her instructions were to make it colourful. Basically, this way to ensure I mixed up the nutrients I was consuming. Yellow capsicum is great for Vitamin A and C. Red capsicum is full of beta carotene, as are carrots. Mushrooms are full of protein.  Spinach is full of iron and magnesium. But rather than learning all of this, she suggested I just cycle through a number of them, but always have multiple colours. This way I would always be providing my body with a variety of nutrients. 

My nutritionist told me, I should never have less than 4 colours on my plate. Just having red and green (ie meat and salad) was not sufficient.

So when you are making your dinner this week, see if you can make that plate as coloured as possible. Post a picture of your most colourful meal this week on the Facebook page. I’d offer some kind of prize, but I don’t have anything substantial. The winner will get mention by me and the admiration of others!