Making healthy, colorful foods a lifestyle for nutrition and good eating.

Why Choose Foods by Color?

Nature's healing colors abound in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and healthy oils. The colors are actually pigments that come from a special class of chemicals known as phytonutrients. When you eat foods of a particular color, you access their particular healing powers. Scientists are just now beginning to un- derstand the medicinal impacts of phytonutrients and why eating fruits and vegetables may be our greatest preventive tool against conditions such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. For many centuries traditional healers have taught color-coded eating as essential for maintaining health, vitality, and long life. From this foundation in traditional medicine and modern scientific investigation, 7-Color Cuisine has emerged.

Eat 7 Colors a Day

The five bright fruit and vegetable colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue-violet-purple, plus the tan earth tones of grains and legumes, reveal the phytonutrient pedigrees of those foods. Animal foods, including dairy, eggs, fish, and poultry, are creamy white in color and contain healing nutrients called zoonutrients. 7-Color Cuisine: Making Healthy, Colorful Foods a Lifestyle for Nutrition and Good Eating guides you to select foods based on their colors and yielding an array of phytonutrients and zoonutrients that research shows may help fight disease, help you lose weight, derail the aging process, and sharpen your wits. The cookbook integrates planning, buying, storing, and preparing brightly colored foods that heal. And the 7-Color system aims to heighten your awareness of how delicious and satisfying well-prepared good food really can be.

Most nutrition and diet regimens emphasize the composition of food, enumerating how many calories a particular food or recipe contains and its carbohydrate, fat, fiber, and protein content. Although these numbers are important and are included with every recipe in this cookbook, the emphasis in the 7-Color system is on eating the right foods and enjoying them. By unlocking the keys to the 7-Color plan, you'll accomplish your dietary goals without having to play the numbers game.

The plan begins with basics on how phytonutrients protect you and why brightly colored foods are the best food choices to help you look and feel your best. Each color has its own category of protective phytonutrients, and the health benefits of each category are fully explained. Foods making up the category are listed as top picks, and you are encouraged to eat as many different selections as possible. The amount of each color you should eat is also given in detailed, thirty-day meal plans, shopping tips, and recipes for both warm and cool weather. You'll also find a pantry management section to help you track staples and eliminate high-calorie and less-nutritious items. Once you learn the 7-Color plan, you'll be able to mix and match recipes for an endless variety of delicious meals.

Eat Less, Maintain Optimal Weight, and Feel Better

7-Color Cuisine features foods that are fresh and seasonal. They're also nutrient-dense, meaning that they come packaged as nature intended, with hundreds of different beneficial nutrients. Nothing has been removed or processed out of these foods, so they retain natural digestive enzymes which can help maintain an optimum body balance of acid and alkaline (pH). Learning which foods to avoid and why their consumption can sabotage weight loss and accelerate aging, you'll also feel more satisfied and less inclined to snack. With this system, followers have reported drastic improvements to digestive problems, bloating, and water retention. Many say they have great success maintaining optimal weight and that such maladies as aching joints, skin problems, fatigue, low sex drive, and reduced cognitive function have improved.

This plan is high in protein, much of it from vegetables and legumes, and naturally low in processed carbohydrates and saturated fat, because the emphasis is on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, lean protein, and healthy oils. As we grow older, we need more protein-rich foods to meet the body's maintenance and repair needs. We also need to choose friendly oils over saturated fats to maintain normal cellular and brain function. The 7-Color plan is so easy to follow that you don't have to wonder about how to implement a healthier dietary regimen. It is a healthier regime, although it doesn't feel like one. And yet the plan will be unique to you because you will be learning a system that you can adjust to meet your personal goals.

All of the menus and recipes here have been analyzed carefully to make sure they adhere to the latest nutrition recommendations and dietary guidelines. My plan is based on and supported by the latest scientific findings, not the latest food fads. I know the sound nutritional information contained in 7-Color Cuisine: Making Healthy, Colorful Foods a Lifestyle for Nutrition and Good Eating will endure for a lifetime of more enjoyable and nutritious meals.

Excerpted from 7-Color Cuisine: Making healthy, colorful foods a lifestyle for nutrition and good eating(http://www.penmarin.com/proddetail.asp?prod=Zimmerman000&f rom=4) by Marcia Zimmerman, M.D. (Penmarin Books http://www.penmarin.com, February 2006).

About the author:

Marcia Zimmerman, M.Ed., C.N. is an internationally known nutrition author, educator and consultant to some of the country's leading nutrition and supplement companies. Zimmerman is a recognized expert on the use of dietary modification and supplements to address various health problems.