Adding more color to your 'balanced' diet

By Gan Tian (Beijing Today)
Updated: 2008-06-02 10:29

White

protecting your lungs

The white family includes endive, garlic, ginger, parsnips, white peaches, pears, potatoes, white mushrooms and white corn. Actually, white, tan and brown fruits and vegetables contain varying amounts of phytochemicals of interest to scientists. These include allicin, found in the garlic and onion family. The mineral selenium, found in mushrooms, is also the subject of research.

Orange

protecting your spleen

Oranges and tangerines certainly belong to this group. Other members include Hami melon, pumpkin and papaya. Oranges are an excellent source of vitamin C and contain some vitamin A, which is good for your spleen.

However, vitamin C dissipates quickly after an orange is cut or squeezed. Eight hours at room temperature or 24 hours in the refrigerator is enough to cause a 20 percent loss in vitamin C. Canned, bottled and frozen-concentrate orange juices have a greatly decreased vitamin C content.

Purple

protecting your brain

Grapes, blueberries, blackberries, purple cabbages and onions all belong to the purple group. Purple fruits and vegetables contain varying amounts of health-promoting phytochemicals such as anthocyanins and phenolics, currently being studied for their antioxidant and anti-aging benefits.

Purple group foods are rich in the antioxidant monoterpenes that protect tissues from free radical damage. Aubergines are members of the solanacae family, which includes peppers and tomatoes. In animal studies, rabbits fed aubergine were protected against the formation of plaque, even when fed a high cholesterol diet. The active ingredients in the aubergines bind with cholesterol from the diet in the intestinal tract, thereby preventing it from entering the bloodstream.

Black aduki beans are the quickest of all the beans to cook, the lowest in calories and the highest in nutritional content. The beans help detoxify the body ?and, like all beans, are a good source of folic acid, which aids the formation of red blood cells. They also provide magnesium and copper, both of which are needed by the body to utilize vitamin C and calcium.

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