The 7 colours of health

I bought a book entitled "What color is your diet?" several months ago and though I've yet to read it from cover to cover have dipped into it countless times and read and reread a few of the key sections. The book, written by the director of the UCLA center for human nutrition, contains lots of useful information on the properties of foods and how they impact the body. It explains the major differences in diets across the world and how these influence the incidence of cancer, heart disease and other health problems.

The book suggests that to stay healthy and reduce the risk of cancer etc we should eat not 5, but at least 7 portions of fruit and veg each day. It presents 7 colour categories and provides a list of fruit and veg that fall into each category. Each colour is important for a different reason and the book recommends that we eat at least one item of each colour every day.

At present I do not eat the 7 colours or even 7 portions of fruit and veg each day, but I do consider this to be my goal. Even ignoring the possible health benefits it will make for a varied and interesting diet and encourage me to grow some more unusual fruit and vegetables in the garden and on our land when we get some.

I shall blog the 7 colours, why each is good for you and a list of foods of each colour over the next couple of weeks. I shall also state in brackets how many colours each recipe I post contains.

Another new blog

Until leaving my job at the University I've always considered myself too busy to play around with cooking and if asked I would say that I "couldn't cook properly" whatever that means.

I guess I've had a difficult relationship with food so far. As a child I was the awkward one who wouldn't eat anything. As an adult that changed a little, but I think it's only in the last three or four years that I've realised that I'm not awkward - I just don't really like eating and hate preparing meat. If meat couldn't be bought in non-animal shapes in tins or cardboard boxes in the freezer section of the supermarket I would have turned vegetarian years ago.

As it is I'm not currently vegetarian, but I eat meat probably at most once every couple of weeks. I don't know if I will become fully vegetarian and if I do what time scale that will be on - we will just have to wait and see. I'm creating this blog as a journey on the way to being healthier and more inventive with food, and in addition to posting recipes will be writing my thoughts on food in general, particularly 'new foods' that I've only just tried or starting cooking.