As we continue in our food series on Eating with the Seasons, we explore why nature has provided us with fruits and vegetables that are the colours of the rainbow each season. What does each colour mean and how they can help us to live healthier and longer. Over the coming weeks, we’ll explain why mother nature has left us clues on how to eat for longevity — she colour coded the food.
There are so many different coloured fruits and vegetables but have you ever wondered why? Why are tomato and watermelon red in colour? Why are plants, cucumber and rourou leaves green?
Is it because nature just got bored or is she leaving us clues on how, when and why to eat the medicine provided in plant-based foods.
The spectrum of the rainbow can be found in foods including red, orange, purple, blue, green, yellow, brown and even, white.
Red foods keep our blood and heart healthy, give strength and support to our joints, and help to combat some cancers including prostate cancer.
Purple and blue foods are excellent for our brains and help us with our memory and are packed with cancer-fighting antioxidants.
Green helps our entire body and strengthens our immune system. White foods like garlic and onions help lower cholesterol and blood pressure, as well as reduce the risk of stomach cancer and heart disease.
Yellow foods are great for the skin and helps maintain a productive digestive system.
And orange foods help keep our eyes healthy and are a great source of vitamin C to strengthen the immune system. Orange and yellow fruits are also often an excellent source of vitamin C, omega-3 fatty acids and folate that helps reduce the risk of birth defects.
Like a mother instinctively knowing what to feed her young, nature’s coloured-foods are like traffic lights that signal to us to get ready, get set and go get the nutritious food.
Disease fighting chemicals in food
No matter what the colour or type of food, all of the rainbow foods have one thing in common: phytochemicals (“fight-o-chemicals”).
These special plant chemicals help indicate the health of a plant and its fruits, as well as when it is ready to be eaten and which nutrients may be present. These are all ways in which plants advertise when they are ready to eat, and a signal to animals and insects that its seeds are ready to spread. Just as a traffic light signals red for stop, orange for get ready and green for go, the colour of fruits and vegetables signify their benefit as a food.
Mother Nature has cleverly designed our foods to be full of phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals and fibre to promote health and lower the risk of disease.
Why are local oranges green?
In season right now are the green-skinned oranges and mandarins and packed full of vitamins.
Is Mother Nature signalling for us to start boosting our immune system now to defend against the impending colder temperatures in August?
Local oranges in Fiji are green. Why is that? The reason is the tropical climate and because the weather rarely gets chilling cold. Because of the lack of cool weather, the phytochemical, chlorophyll, remains in the skin of the orange, keeping it green.
Chlorophyll turns the sun into energy for the plant. When an orange is exposed to cool weather while still on the branch, it turns to orange. Since most people associate green fruit with unripe fruit, green oranges overseas are artificially induced to turn orange to make them sellable.
In some cases they are exposed to ethylene gas, which breaks down and kills the chlorophyll, but sprays the natural fruit with a petroleum-based gas.
Some are shocked with cold, or covered in wax. Some are scrubbed down with detergent and some are just dipped in orange dye.
How crazy is it that we remove an important and life-repairing chemical because we don’t like the colour of the fruit?
Chlorophyll is a plant’s nutrient-rich, green blood that provides us with a natural detoxifier and a potent antioxidant properties if we eat it. It also aids in the recycling of nutrients and may aid DNA repair.
It’s commonly found in lettuce, moca, bele and rourou leaves, but it is also found in green oranges, bananas and mandarins. But you have to eat the skin as well as the fruit to get the benefits. You can zest and grate the skin for cooking or drinks. You can use the skin to make marmalades and chutney. Take a lead from nature, eat some green orange skin this season!
Why orange foods are good for you
Orange fruits and vegetables get their colour from phytochemicals called carotenoids which are the orange pigments found in citrus skins and other orange-coloured fruits and vegetables.
These chemicals are converted in the body to vitamin A, which is an essential vitamin for immune function and helps to protect in inner parts of the eye.
The old wives tale of eating carrots to improve your eyes has a lot of merit. Scientists have also reported that carotenoid-rich foods can help reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer, especially in the lungs, oesophagus, and stomach.
Fiji is currently blessed with lots of orange foods including kumala, pumpkin, mango, rock melon, papaya, cumquats and of course, oranges and mandarins. But why would Mother Nature be providing us with more oranges and mandarins right now?
Why are they now in season and not months before? Would it have something to do with the impending colder weather ahead? Is nature telling us we have three months to boost up on vitamin C to strengthen our immune systems to prevent a cold and flu in August?
Eaten alone, the phytochemicals of rainbow-coloured raw fruits and vegetables are not a magic cure for life without disease. But eaten together, and in unison with rest, exercise, no cigarettes and with no man-made chemicals in the diet; you are giving yourself the best possible defence to live to a ripe old age to watch your grandchildren grow up.
NEXT week, we look at a coloured food that some kids (and adults!) just can’t stand the sight of, and would prefer not to have on their plate — green. But green coloured foods contain a special phytochemical that helps repair damage inside the body.
* Lance Seeto is the award winning chef, television host and accredited food writer based on Castaway Island Fiji. He is also a member of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (IFWTWA). Follow his culinary journeys at www.lanceseeto.com and Facebook.
