Introduction
Before two years ago, I was very delicate. I always had constant slight sickness so my mother worried about the condition of my health. She tried to develop my physical strength through many medicines and expensive foods like ginseng and samgyetang(삼계탕), chicken broth with ginseng and other ingredients, but I was steel feeble. One day my mother heard about “color food” from her friend so she started to serve me the “rainbow meal”. At first, I and my mother did not expect much of this “color food diet treat”, but it give me the greatest good effect compare with any other treats. It seemed like a very awkward practice, but it was very simple. Just eating five different color foods at each meal was the way that makes me Healthy. I think the “color food diet” is the best way to be strong but I noticed people do not practice it because they think it is very special and some tricky way to perform. I was very frustrated that people do not know about color food and do not practice this favorable but easy diet; so I want to offer and share this information about “color food”.
What is Color Food ?
Every ingredient has its own color. The strawberry has a red color and unripe pepper has a green color. These fruits and vegetables have such pigments not so as to be seen to be pretty but to protect themselves from ultraviolet rays and bacterium. If people and animals are exposed to too much sunlight, they can avoid the sunlight by moving to a shady spot. However, if plants get too much sunlight, they can not avoid the sunlight because they can not move by themselves. So, they make the pigment called phytochemical to fight against the ultraviolet rays, bacterium and mold. (Yoon PD)These pigments are produced to fight with bad things, so they function in our body in the way same as in the plants. Pigments make plants strong and produce the special flavors of the plants. If the plants do not use the pigment, plants will die. There are no plants that do not have any phytochemical. So, all the fruits, vegetables and grains can be treated as color food. Each color pigment has different function so I think eating only one color is not good but bad. It can be cause unbalance in our body nutrients.
Red Food
Red fruits become more red when the sunlight is intense. Red plants contain polyphenol, which is purifying in our body. It removes substances that hurts our body cells and cause cancer. There are many types of red fruits but the representative of red food is the tomatoes. There is western proverb about tomatoe “when tomato ripes red, doctors turn pale.” It means red tomato can protect us from illnesses. The tomatoe can help our digestion and get rid of our tired. It contains much vitamin C which reduces tiredness and helps metabolism. Also it includes vitamin B which helps the fat disintegration, and lycopene that prevent aging through antioxidant action. Comedian Bae Yeonjung is a tomato maniac. She eats about 10 tomatoes a day. Even though her age is over 50, she maintained her skin and bonedensity as healthy as young women. (KBS mysteries of the human body co-producer page. 168,169) There’s a western proverb “If the tomato become red, doctor’s face turn deadly pale” Through this proverb we can guess how tomatoes are good for our health.
Yellow Food
Yellow color food contains betacarotin. Betacarotin changes into vitamin A in our body, and helps immune reaction. It’s also helpful to prevent cataract and arortosclerosis. Flavonoid is also in yellow plants. It intercepts the produce of activeoxygen which is harmful to our body cell because activeoxygen explode in our body. There are many components in Flavonoid. Limonoid which taste a little bitter, represses cancer. It is very much contained in lemon. Naringin and Hesperetin which is contained in the peel of tangerines constrain cancer, oxidation, and inflammation. Both naringin and hesperetin are helpful to protect blood vessel. Also, lots of vitamin C is contained in yellow food. It helps to diminish the stress. If we want to reduce stress, we need adrenalin which is produced in the renal gland. In this process, vitamin C is the most important substance. (KBS mysteries of the human body co-producer page.148,149,150,153,154)
Green Food
Green color food shown as green color because of the chlorophyllous. Chlorophyllous is used to synthesize sunlight so if we take in it, we can take vitamin D that is contained in sunlight. There are many types of green food but nowadays broccoli arose people’s interests very much because it contain sulforaphane which is good at kill the helicobacter bacteria. Helicobacter bacteria that dormant in stomach lining membrane are very hard to root up so this function gets attention from everyone. Dr. Talalay who first discovered that function of sulforaphane experimented on stomach ulcer patients. The result of this experiment was good. Most of patients who take in enough broccolis turned for the better condition. (Yoon, page.136, 137) I think it is such a good news to patients who has stomach illness.
Purple Food
The purple pigments are shown as purple because of anthocyanin. Anthocyanin is very helpful to anti oxidation action more than any other phytochemical. If we take in anthocyanin, it absorbed very quickly in our blood and also protects oxidation of cells and aging. Anthocyanin also makes kidney stronger and prevents osteoporosis. (Kim)The typical purple color fruit is blueberry. In the grape, there are 4 or 5 types of anthocyanin but in blueberry, there are 25~30 different types of anthocyanin so blueberry is better than grape. While the World War 2, England air force pilots were eating spread bread with blueberry jam. Due to this blueberry bread, they could see very exactly although they flight at night. (KBS mysteries of the human body co-producer page.157) Like this example, blueberry makes our eyesight very clearly. Anthocyanin helps to revival the rhodopsin which is the protein that transport spurs from the lights to the optic nerve. Following this information, I think it can be very helpful to the elderly to protect their eyesight by aging.
White Food
There are many kinds of white food. For example, garlic, ginger plant, radish, onion are white food. We also separate the foods that have beige color as white food. Most of the white foods are live in under the ground like root so white pigment has ability to fight against mold or micro organism live under the ground. Thus, white food especially useful to make immunity stronger.(Lee) There’s proverb about garlic and onion, the white food. “Take onion in March and take garlic in May, and then doctors can rest comfortably. As you feel in this proverb, white food is also very helpful to our body. One of the typical white foods is garlic. It contains lots of germanium that helpful to protect our body from cancer. When the SARS raged throughout the Asia, Kimchi that contain garlic attracted people’s attention. I think the tremendous popularity of Kimchi at that time is because of the high immunity operation that came from garlic in the Kimchi. And also, garlic has very powerful sterilizing power because of alicin that make garlic taste strict. It has more powerful sterilizing power than penicillin.(Jun, page.156)
Black Food
These days most people think only the colorful food for example red, orange, green or purple are good for our health. However, it not true. Black food is not inferior to colorful color food. More over, it can be better than colorful color food in some part of efficacy. Black soybean, Black sesame, wild rice and ink of a cuttlefish are kinds of black food. These are containing antocyanin similar to purple food. It diminishes cholesterol and prevents aging. The representative of black food is black sesame. Both white and black sesame include lots of calcium but black sesame contains more calcium than white sesame. Calcium in black sesame is 10 times more than milk. (Jun, page.78) Also, black sesame has vitamin E called tocopherol. Nickname of tocopherol is “anti-aging vitamin” as you see in this nick name; tocopherol is very effective on anti-aging. Concretely, it makes our hair color more black and smoother our hair texture.
People who get healthier life through the color food.
There are many people who became healthier through the color food. Also, I’m the person who gets help from color food. Let’s see some of them and feel more directly about strong point of color food! Here is Mr. Kim kidu who overcome gastric cancer through color food vegetable diet. Before he was pronounced as having terminal gastric cancer, he used to eat fork and drink alcohols everyday. Every night after he came back to home, he always ate meat with one bottle of beer. However, he heard that he has cancer in May, 2000 so after undergo an operation, he started color vegetable diet. At first, it was not that delicious to him who used to eat meat so he didn’t like it but after he got good result from this diet, he performed this diet by himself. Now he can cultivate his own vegetable garden and exercise everyday. He became very healthy after he practiced the color food diet. (Yoon, page.219~229) In improvement of his health, medicines and medical treats must be helping him but I think the color food diet was the root that makes him very healthy.
Here is very famous pop-star who loose weight though color food diet. Who is she? She is Christina Aguilera who has slender and well proportioned figure. Every morning, she ate an apple and always cared about the color food meal. She didn’t eat the meal if the meals don’t include at least five different colors of vegetables or fruits. After she performed this diet, she loose 8kg in two month without yoyo effect. It is Christina Aguilera-style menu. If you want to have slender figure like Christina, try this style eating. After you follow this style meal, you will get a well balanced body.
Conclusion
As you see, color food diet is not that special. It is all the vegetables and fruits and grains that we can see around us, easily. Apples, Bananas, Grapes, Oranges, Watermelons and every other fruits and vegetables are color food. Every own color phytochemical have different functions that is beneficial to our body so we have to take in not only a few types of color but also many different types of color food. These are easy to get but we can’t ignore any of these color foods. If we don’t have these things, we will get illness because of shortage of nutrition. There is “Five a day” campaign started by U.S. National Cancer Institute 10 years ago. They encourage people to take in five different color vegetables in a day. After they conduct this campaign, they get the result that the rate of adultdisease is decreasing (Shim). If you want to be healthy or slender, start a color food diet. It will give you the result you want and you will probably be satisfied by the result of this diet and then offer to others.
BE HEALTHY, Have A NICE BODY !
Work cited
1. KBS mysterious of the human body co-producer “mysterious of the human body” Seoul : gachichanjo p. 2005.
2. Yoon, donghyuk PD “color, let’s eat color.” Seoul : Gurem p. 2006
3. SBS Ways to well-being co-producer “Ways to well-being 2” Seoul : gachichanjo p.2006
1. Shim, jieun. “Calcium, vitaminC prevent cancer. “ Moonwhaillbo 2 Dec 2004.
2. Lee, youmyoung “Is there only black food? White food also can be helpful. ” Newsis 3 Dec 2006
1. Lee, jinrang “monotone food is the best. ” http://blog.naver.com/hiinyoun?Redirect=Log&logNo=110014514615 6 April 2006
2. Kim, minkyung “Pulple fruits contain many antocyanoin.” http://www.seoul.co.kr/magazine/we_view.php?id=20061123312006§ion=enjoy 30 Nov 2006
cover
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tomatoe
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Five a day graph
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Banana
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Broccoli
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Blueberry
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Garlic
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Black soybean
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Pimento and Christina Aguilera
http://blog.naver.com/reyalp?Redirect=Log&logNo=20019541229