Color my world...aka, eat your fruits and veggies

Hey, did you know that your plate is supposed to be colorful...yes, the food you eat.  Not white, bland, brown things.  Nope, I'm talking eat the rainbow.  No...skittles don't count...unless they are your indulgence item...(I'll talk about that in another post another day). 

I'm talking about eating colorful items.  The more colorful your meal, the generally more healthy it is.  However, artificially colored weird things like cheez-its and red hots don't count.  Nope...I'm talking naturally colored things.

I really like the new food "pyramid" - now called the Food Plate with the refresh in 2011:

I think it does a really good job of showing proportionally what you should eat, but also that there should be COLORS on your plate.

Since starting on my fit-venture, I've really been making an effort to eat more and more veggies.  I've been 'hiding' extra veggies in things for a while a la Deceptively Delicious style..(thanks Jessica Seinfeld!), but no, lately I've been really focusing on eating more veggies. 

Don't get me wrong...I still hide veggies...but I want to eat more veggies too.  It works out well for teaching Baby G good eating habits - eat your regular veggies with your meal and the hidden ones are a bonus (oh and by the way, yes it's normal for your grilled cheese to have butternut squash hidden in it..I promise...).

So I'm always on the look out for how I can add veggies to my meals.  The hubs isn't a big veggie fan...So when he sees this on the cutting board...he runs:

But this was part of my meal. 

So, if you want to be healthier, eat your color.

Here are some of my favorite foods and how I like to eat the rainbow:

Red: Strawberries, Red bell peppers

Orange: Carrots (hence the photo), Orange bell peppers, peaches, cauliflower

Yellow - Yellow squash (yes the photo), bananas, corn on the cob, wax beans

Green (might be my favorite color in produce land!) - Green beans, okra, summer squash, swiss chard, kale, green apples, kiwis, green grapes, broccoli, artichokes, brussel sprouts

Blue - blue is a hard color in nature, but it exists and is SUPER healthy - blue berries (just recently started liking these by the way!), blue/purple potatoes, blue corn

Purple - Grapes, potatoes, asparagus, okra, cauliflower, eggplant

Here's a great resource I found while trying to find other blue produce:
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/foods/fn595w.htm

So, eat more like this (last night's dinner - note 50% veggies and colorful! - I made the food pyramid people proud):

Not this (note the lack of color...):

Until next time...

~Amber