Eat Rainbow and Sparkle Wellness

Jun 13

Jun 13 Eat Rainbow and Sparkle Wellness

Summer Issue 2020

The word ‘diet' is described in the dictionary as: “the kinds of food that a person, community or animal habitually eat and/or a special course of food to which a person restricts themselves, either to lose weight or for medical reasons”. However, that infamous word ‘diet’ for many, conjures up the thoughts of restricted food intake, counting calories, low fat, abstinence from pleasure, being hungry, and tasteless food. How depressing! This is why most diets to lose weight do not last for long, and people go back to eating what they previously ate before and the terrible weight yo-yo cycle continues.

We also have a plethora of diet information at our finger tips - on our social media feeds, TV and in the magazines that we read. It’s in our face everyday. Everyone has an opinion or thinks they are a health expert, and it all gets very confusing. So what if we strip the word ‘diet’ back to its original meaning of ‘what we habitually eat’ and take a sensible and practical approach to the food we consume and use food to improve our health and wellness.

This is why I really like the Rainbow Eating Plan. See, I don’t even want to include the diet word in that sentence. Eating a rainbow is about including a colourful variety of fruit and vegetables and plant based foods (grains, nuts, seeds, legumes) into your meals and snacks every day. By adding colour you add a multitude of delicious tastes, textures, smells and flavours to your meals and snacks, but you also increase your intake of extremely important micronutrients, phytonutrients, antioxidants and enzymes that are vital for the optimal functioning of every cell in your body.

A Rainbow Eating Plan requires no calorie counting, being hungry or any abstinence from pleasurable foods, so it’s something you can work into your everyday life - for the rest of your life - thus making it a habit. By eating this way, you fill up on the good stuff and nourish every cell in your body and, in return, diminish the desire for factory produced foods that contain poor nutrients and exposure to preservatives and artificial additives, which overtime can negatively impair our health.

A Rainbow Eating Plan is effectively eating ‘real’ food - the food our bodies were intended to eat and our cells understand what to do with. These natural foods contain information that our cells can read and use to support every organ in our body and its function. This essential information that our cells require is missing in processed foods, no matter how many micronutrients are synthetically added. Eating a Rainbow does not mean you cannot eat dairy, meat, poultry, fish and seafood. You just incorporate a variety of colourful fruit, vegetables and other plant foods onto your plate with it.

Rainbow foods also contain enzymes. Foods high in these enzymes are tropical fruits like pineapple, banana, mango, papaya and avocado, as well as fermented foods like sauerkraut, kefir and miso. By eating these foods we can support digestion and this may in return improve the absorption of nutrients into our cells.

Vegetables and fruit also contain insoluble fibre that feeds our beneficial bacteria, which play numerous roles in the body and support our immune system function. There are also trillions of bacteria in the soil where fruit and vegetables grow. When we eat a raw rainbow we also eat these bacteria which, again, support our overall health. This is why eating organic fruit and vegetables (whenever possible) is so much better as the pesticides used in non-organic farming lower both the nutrient levels of the soil and negatively affect the number of bacteria we are exposed to.

Colourful plant foods contain a plethora of phytochemicals. These are compounds found in plants that help the plant thrive and fight off predators. When we eat plants and their fruits, we luckily also receive the benefit of these compounds. Examples of these compounds are polyphenols like quercetin which is in citrus, the sulphur compound allicin which is in garlic, and anthocyanins which are in blueberries. Scientists estimate that there are over 5000 different phytochemicals in these plant foods and their health benefits to us are numerous.

A Rainbow Eating Plan will also help maintain your intake of important minerals and vitamins vital for you to sparkle with health. Fruit and vegetables have high levels of vitamin A, C and E, as well as minerals like magnesium, calcium, phosphorous and zinc. Beta-carotene is found in orange/yellow fruit and veg, such as apricots, mango, carrots, sweet potato, peppers and squash. Beta-carotene gets converted into vitamin A in the body which is a powerful antioxidant and also acts as a hormone responsible for our gene expression. Vitamin A is also very important, as it helps our immune system fight infections.

Furthermore, eating a rainbow helps increase our intake of important minerals such as calcium and magnesium. These can be found in leafy greens such as collard greens, spinach and kale, which are easy to incorporate regularly. We all know the importance of calcium for our bone and teeth health and reducing the risk of osteoporosis. This is specifically a concern for many women, especially following menopause. Magnesium deficiency is very common in the UK, due to diets lacking in whole foods. As magnesium is essential to hundreds of biochemical reactions in the body, deficiency can be problematic to our health.

Therefore, incorporating a Rainbow Eating Plan into your lifestyle is not only delicious and full of colour, but it also helps us supply our body with essential vitamins, minerals, fibre, phytonutrients, antioxidants, enzymes and bacteria that are so important for every cell in our body to function effectively. Empower yourself to begin your Rainbow Eating Journey and sparkle from the inside out.

Changing Habits

Once you get started, eating a daily rainbow becomes a habit. Here are a few tips:

Start replacing factory foods with whole foods. Swap the sugary cereals for whole oats and fruit
Every meal or snack should contain different colours
Your fridge should contain mostly fruit, vegetables and whole foods
Have a bowl of fruit or chopped vegetables at the ready and within easy access - on your kitchen counter or work station
Prepare filling nutritious snacks - nuts, seeds, dried fruit, berries, vegetable sticks
Beans and legumes (canned) are quick and easy to throw into a stew, soup or casserole
Try a plant food you haven’t tried before, or a different cooking style
Stay away from processed plant foods like soya (vegan meat replacement)
Be prepared. Batch cook meals and freeze for a quick and easy ready-meal
Have plenty of containers / thermos to put your meals and snacks in when working
Read labels when straying from the fruit and vegetable aisle in the supermarket. Fruit and vegetables don’t come with a label so it will save you time when food shopping!

While working on film and TV sets, it’s really important to keep your rainbow eating plan going. If you aim to eat a rainbow 80% of the time and rely on the catering 20% of the time, it will be a fantastic start to your habitual eating. Here are some ideas to give you inspiration, keep you satisfied, provide energy, and get you sparkling.

Meals and snack ideas while on set:

Enhance salads with:

+ lean meats: grilled chicken/prawns, canned seafood (tuna, mackerel, sardines, crabmeat)

beans and pulses: chickpeas, lentils, kidney beans, black beans, etc.
roasted vegetables: pumpkin, parsnips, sweet potato, celeriac, beetroot, garlic
healthy fats: seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, quinoa), nuts (almonds, pistachio, cashews, walnuts), avocado, egg
extra vegetables such as steamed broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, asparagus
dress salads and vegetables with olive oil, lemon, apple cider vinegar, mustard, hemp oil, balsamic

A salad does not have to mean lettuce and a tomato. You can easily make a tasty and very filling meal with a little imagination.

Snacks should be nutrient rich and provide the body with energy. Eating quick fixes from the catering table such as biscuits, crisps, pastries and doughnuts give you that quick sugar hit and fill a gap, but they will leave you hungry an hour later and the sugar rush will dip, leaving you feeling tired and needing more sugar to keep going. Snacks could look like this:

Rye bread / rice cakes with hummus / avocado / nut butter
Oat and chia seed pudding with pumpkin seeds
Quark / cottage cheese / Greek yoghurt with berries or grated apple/pear
Lean meats or beef jerky
Bounce ball / naked bar or make your own
Vegetable fritters or falafel
Hard boiled eggs
Carrot / cucumber / pepper sticks / sugar snap peas with hummus or guacamole
Avocado with cracked pepper / paprika
Nuts / seeds / dried fruit mix
Homemade muesli bars / banana bread (no added sugar)
Roasted chickpeas
Piece of fruit or mixed berries with your favourite nut butter or handful of seeds