COLOR YOUR PALETTE: BENEFITS OF EATING A RAINBOW DIET

Benefits of a Rainbow Diet on Your Plate

Skittles commercials tell us to “taste the rainbow” – but what does that really mean? For one, their slogan intends to convince people to buy their colorful candies and has absolutely nothing to do with the rainbow diet. Actually, it’s the complete opposite of this way of eating, which is slowly gaining more momentum in the mainstream.

What’s the Rainbow Diet?

Dr. Deanna Minich originally coined the term “rainbow diet.” According to Minich, it helps care for the seven systems of the body: adrenals, reproductive glands, digestive system, heart, thyroid, pituitary gland, and pineal gland. Each color of the rainbow corresponds to one of the systems. Eating certain foods nourishes the system of the same color. The rainbow diet’s goal is to cover your plate with fruits and vegetables in a variety of colors, hence how it got its name. It’s a way to ensure that you’re getting enough vitamins and nutrients into your daily diet. To follow this diet, you should eat plant-based foods in a wide array of colors. Aim to eat as many colors as you can in a day: the more variation, the better.

Benefits Eating Colorful Food

There are so many different diet plans that become super trendy and then eventually fizzle out after people get frustrated.  Often, doctors debunk them and find that they do more harm than good. Unlike many of these fads, the rainbow diet has many benefits for your health.

Easy to follow: First and foremost, eating the rainbow is pretty simple, so long as you have access to fresh or frozen produce. There’s no carb or calorie counting or excluded food groups like there are for other diets. It’s not hard to adapt to this way of eating since you have tons of choices for things to eat. Every vegetable and fruit is fair game – all you have to do is eat a bunch of different ones. Certain diets can be restrictive and leave you with few options. Eating colorfully, you have hundreds of possibilities. If you don’t like one type of food in a color group, you still have so many other options. For example, if you don’t like apples, you can instead eat tomatoes, radishes, strawberries, and countless other red foods.

Lots of variety:  One common reason why people give up on their diets is that they get tired of the repetition of the same meals over and over again. Following a rainbow diet, you have so much freedom to experiment with different types of produce. You might even discover new foods you’d never tried before. Many find it pushes them to eat outside of the box. It’s so easy to fall into the habit of cooking and eating the same fruits and veggies each week. When you’re consciously making an effort to eat as many colors as possible, you’ll have a more diverse palette. 

Better health: When you eat colorfully, you fill your diet with every category of phytonutrients. Phytonutrients are chemicals that plants produce to protect themselves from the sun and insects. Unlike preservatives and pesticides, these chemicals are all natural and are healthy for humans too.  Phytonutrients fuel our bodies with vitamins and antioxidants, reduce inflammation, boost the immune system, and can also help prevent heart disease and certain cancers. Most people who eat the standard American diet that most people follow aren’t consuming each group of phytonutrients. We’re creatures of habit and tend to gravitate toward the same foods we’re accustomed to eating. The rainbow diet helps incorporate these essential nutrients into your daily diet, and over time can improve your overall health.

 Food for Thought 

Think about your daily diet and the foods you typically consume during the week. Are you eating fruits and vegetables in every color of the rainbow? Are you eating a variety of produce, or are you eating the same ones week after week? Challenge yourself to eat every color of the rainbow (or as many as you can) each day. You never know what new veggies and fruits you may discover and become new favorites.  

For a healthy breakfast meal, try our Garden Harvest omelette paired with one of our Funny Bunny cocktails…Mmmm…Good! Oh and the Garden Harvest as well as our other omelettes are all part of our gluten free breakfast options, hope to see you soon at the restaurant.