Balanced nutrition for a long, healthy life

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Home ? lifestyle Your Daily Health Balanced nutrition for a long, healthy life Published: Sat, 2011-05-07 00:30 Tweet  A balanced diet would consist of eating foods of every colour, every day. Variety is not just the “spice of life,” it is also a very important way to keep your internal organs healthy.
Even if you’re eating natural fruits, vegetables and grains, if you are eating the exact same thing seven days a week, it is not healthy for you.

Meet the nutrition rainbow
When we eat the exact same thing day in and day out we set our body up to breed imbalances that can lead to disease. Don’t turn your digestive system into a septic breeding ground. Mix things up!
According to the Chinese medical tradition, there are five elemental energies that make up our universe, as well as our bodies. These energies are: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Each of these energies has a corresponding colour.? For instance, wood corresponds to green, fire to red, earth to yellow and orange, metal to white, and water to black, blue, and purple. A balanced diet would consist of eating foods of every colour, every day.

Vegetables
Try to eat vegetables every day that represent all of the elemental energies and colours. For green (wood), your choices include asparagus and dark leafy greens such as spinach, broccoli, and kale.
Vegetables in the red group (fire) include hot red peppers, red bell peppers, or beets. For yellow and orange group (earth) eat pumpkins, squash, and yams. Some white vegetables (metal) are cauliflower, jicama, and daikon radish. For your dark veggies (water), try eggplant, seaweed, or black mushrooms.

Fruits and nuts
Your nutrition rainbow should also include a wide array of fruits and nuts. For green: lime or melon for your fruits; and pumpkin seeds or pistachios for nuts and seeds. Red fruits: apples, tomatoes, or cherries; pecans for your red nut. Yellow and orange fruit: mangoes, oranges, or papaya; for nuts: almonds and cashews. For white fruit: pears and bananas; nut: pine nuts and macadamias. Dark (water) fruits: blueberries, and raisins as your fruit; nuts and seeds: chestnuts, walnuts and flaxseeds.

Beans and grains
Don’t forget to eat beans and grains from every elemental colour! Green: lentils and mung beans and rye for your grain. Red: red lentils, adzuki beans, and red beans; for grains, buckwheat and amaranth.
Yellow/orange: chickpeas and butter beans; corn and millet. White: soybeans and white beans, rice and barley.? Dark: navy beans and black beans, quinoa and black wild rice. Follow this advice in every category and you’ll be taking in nearly 600 carotenoids, which are the powerful antioxidants that mop up free radicals to prevent cancer and help you see, smell, hear and live better.

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Do root vegetables like sweet potatoes count as vegetables or starches, and is it true that all the nutrition is in ...

Do root vegetables like sweet potatoes count as vegetables or starches, and is it true that all the nutrition is in the skins? - Boston.com  Home Today's Globe News Your Town Business Sports Lifestyle A&E Things to do Travel Cars Jobs Real Estate Health Fashion Food House & Home Green Living Relationships Forums Pets Weddings Moms Do Good Deal of the Day HOME/COLLECTIONS/VEGETABLESDo root vegetables like sweet potatoes count as vegetables or starches, and is it true that all the nutrition is in the skins?Health AnswersMay 02, 2011View commentsShareEmailPrint

Q. Do root vegetables like sweet potatoes count as vegetables or starches, and is it true that all the nutrition is in the skins?

A. Potatoes have fallen from grace in recent years, as health authorities have argued that starch-filled spuds shouldn’t be counted as a vegetable in the diet. The USDA recently proposed reducing the amount of potatoes served in school lunchrooms. But the attack on potatoes leaves some confusion: Should sweet potatoes and other tubers and roots also be lumped into this category?

Linda Antinoro, a registered dietitian at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, says that when evaluating meals, she and her colleagues consider both the potato and sweet potato to be starches. Like white potatoes, sweet potatoes have a high amount of starch — an abundant carbohydrate found in all kinds of plants — compared to other vegetables, which means that a portion of sweet potatoes has about triple the calories of a similar volume of carrots or other vegetable.

However, Antinoro adds, “we would encourage people to eat a sweet potato rather than other starches.’’ By replacing your white potato, rice, pasta, or bread with a sweet potato, you’re adding a whopping dose of beta-carotene, as well as vitamin C, potassium, and other vitamins and minerals.

If you eat sweet potatoes with their skins, you also get a lot of fiber, which can help keep blood sugar levels from spiking after a meal and may also discourage overeating by contributing a sense of fullness. The American Diabetes Association lists sweet potatoes as one of 10 “superfoods,’’ which carry a high nutrition content without sending blood sugar soaring. While it’s not true that the skin contains most of the vitamins and minerals, it contains a large portion of their fiber. Antinoro says it’s always better to eat fruits and vegetables with edible skins to get the most nutritional advantage from their fiber content.

Other high-starch vegetables similar to sweet potatoes include yams, cassava, pumpkin, and winter squashes (e.g., butternut). Antinoro says that most other root vegetables like carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, and rutabagas have a lower starch content and caloric density than potatoes and sweet potatoes, and can be counted as vegetables rather than starches in your meals. The overall balance to strive for, she says, is a plate that contains about half vegetables, one-quarter starches, and one-quarter protein-rich foods.

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