Dr. Shmuel Shields | 3. Guard Your Health: Rainbow Nutrition: Keep it Colorful | CHAZAQ

Welcome to our guard your health series. We are providing information that is not often learned in school. Okay. Uh guarding your health is not uh one of the subjects that's taught. uh there might be some some health related uh teaching in school but um it's an important uh topic and uh that's the role I've played for many decades as a practicing nutritionist is seeing myself more as an educator and trying to provide information that sometimes people are just unaware of um or never really learned or never really uh thought about. So what I want to do now is I want to talk about uh this topic will be called beyond vitamins. Now we all know vitamins and minerals play a critical role in our health and well-being. Uh as a nutritionist I can tell you uh through the studies I've had in nutrition. Um we need approximately 40 different nutrients a day. And if you're getting 39 out of the 40, you might feel you're doing fantastic. Uh if you could imagine a ball player getting on base 39 out of 40 times, he'd have some contract. In in the world of nutrition though, it doesn't work that way because any nutrient that you become deficient in over time will lead to some illness or some disease in the body. Just to give you a few examples, if you're deficient in iron for a long enough period of time, eventually you'll develop something called iron deficiency anemia. If you're deficient in calcium or vitamin D, it will affect your bone health down the road. So, every nutrient is essential and we have to do the best we can to uh secure uh getting those nutrients from a well- balanced eating plan, possibly some supplementation uh to ensure that we're getting as many of these nutrients to really get it all all that we need. Um having said that, this talk today is really a little bit different. We're going to talk about beyond vitamins and minerals and we're going to address something called phytonutrients also known as plant chemicals. Uh as you probably know uh foods are made up of many complex chemicals and the term is called phytonutrients. Phyto means plant and nutrients are the the nutrients that are made up in those plant foods. I could tell you that approximately 10,000 phytonutrients or plant chemicals have been identified today. And that list, I'm sure, is continuing to grow. Out of those 10,000 plant chemicals, only about a thousand have been wellstudied. Uh, we're not going to go through a thousand today, but I'm going to give you some of the more common ones that you may have heard of, and I'm going to tell you some of the health benefits that you get by consuming, uh, these foods that contain these phytonutrients. So, um, the real buzzword in nutrition today is something called rainbow nutrition. The more colorful your diet is and the more that your diet consists of whole unprocessed foods, the more vitamins and minerals you're going to get. But maybe as important or more important are the plant chemicals that you're going to get. And these plant chemicals benefit us in many, many ways. They could protect the cells in the body, the blood vessels. They could reduce the risk of of of getting dementia. They provide your your blood vessels. Your blood vessels will be healthier. Uh they help re uh reduce inflammation in the body. Um they protect and provide your skin with better health. Um so we're going to cover um the food groups today, the different colored food groups, and we're going to show you the plant chemicals that are found in that particular color. And I want you to be aware that if you are missing a certain color, this is something I do with my patients. I look at a food diary that they keep and I try to assess colors that are missing in their diet. So if they've gone three days without an orange food or a blue food or a green food or a yellow food, I try to point out the things that they're missing by avoiding that color, by not getting that color. Um, and I encourage people to try to get as many of the colors in the rainbow as you can get on a daily basis. Uh, some of you may know the acronym Roy G. BIV. Uh, that's how kids are taught in school to learn the colors of the rainbow. R O Y G. B I Roy G. BIV. The red is red. The O is orange. The Y is yellow. The G is green. and B IV bib. B for blue, I for indigo, and V for violet. Um, so we're going to talk uh briefly about each category, some of the plant chemicals that are found in those different colors and some of the health benefits. And once again, to make this um guard your health series here, this uh topic today a little bit more relevant, think about uh colors that are missing in your meal plans and look for ways through your meals and snacks that you can add more color into your uh meal plans. Okay, so let's start with R for red. Uh we're not going to list all the red foods, but there are many from beets, tomatoes, cherries. Uh there are quite a number of red foods and red foods uh one of the plant chemicals that are in red foods is called lycopine and lycopine has benefits for the prostate. Uh it can reduce the risk of developing certain cancers uh reduce the risk of macular degeneration which is a serious eye disorder and it even has benefits for cardiovascular health. So look for red and look for getting uh the lycopine that's in the in the red. Um the next group I want to cover is the orange. O for orange. And there are again there are a good number of orange foods. There are carrots and sweet potatoes, apricots, butternut squash, nectarines, papayas, peaches, uh quite a number of uh orange foods. orange foods. Uh the grouping of uh phytonutrients in orange foods are known as the carotenoids. And probably the more famous or well-known carotenoid is something called betaarotene. Um it's a compound that gets converted into vitamin A in our bodies. And it also has excellent antioxidant properties. Uh may protect against certain types of cancers. also may protect against macular degeneration and also seems to have heart uh benefits uh and benefits for the skin as well. So make sure that orange you are looking to get maybe an orange colored food in your diet every day or as many days of the week as you can. Um the next food group is the yellow group. Um, it is also a source of betaarotene and it also has some luteine. Um, some of the examples of yellow foods would be yellow peppers, pineapple, yellow uh squash, corn, there are yellow tomatoes and even the uh yolk of an egg is yellow. So there is some in there are some interesting um phytochemicals. Luteine being the more prominent one in the yellow group. Um, now we're going to move to the green group. Greens are a little bit more common as a food because there are many, many green foods and I would say people tend to get some greens in, but you are looking to really get something green every day. Uh, it could be avocado, it could be green leafy vegetables, broccoli, uh, kiwi, green peppers, spinach. quite a good list of of green foods. Again, the green foods are very very good sources, probably the best source of a phytochemical called luteine. Luteine plays a major role in maintaining eye health and dark green leafy vegetables are a great source. Um the all there's another phyitochemical in greens called indoles. Um and they are found primarily in cruciferous vegetables like green cabbage, broccoli, um also in Brussels sprouts, um cauliflower. Uh also they have some cancer protecting uh benefits. So that makes it a very important choice as well. Um and now we're going to move on to the last grouping. I'm going to do this grouping together. blue, indigo, and violet. Because I'm not an artist, I have trouble differentiating between indigo, violet. Okay, blue might be a little bit easier for me, but we'll combine these colors al together. So, what are some of the blue, indigo, and violet foods? Okay, so you have things like blackberries, eggplant, plums, prunes, purple cabbage, purple grapes, and raisins. Okay, that's a pretty good list. There are probably others out there. Um what are the advantage of these foods? So these foods contain a very powerful antioxidant uh called anthocyaninins and again they are very important for strengthening the blood vessels reducing the risk of the blood clotting. Uh so it they have a protective role against stroke and cardiovascular disease. uh may reduce the risk of certain cancers as well as urinary tract infections. Um so another very very important uh color uh that should be incorporated into your uh meal plans during the day. Thank you for listening and spreading this