Animals In Print
The On-Line Newsletter

From 29 January 2002 Issue

LET THEM EAT RAINBOWS

Marie's non-cerebral advice to revolting peasants was "Let them eat cake." She wasn't referring to petit fours or éclairs.  When food was scarce in France during the 1790s, the miserable people (les miserables) baked fireplace ashes with wheat and water to form a substance commonly known as "cake."  In our 21st century, there is a variety and 
abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables, even for those people unlucky enough to be living in Buffalo, New York during record snow falls.

Shining white light through a prism, one is instantly blessed with the hidden beauty and 
complex nature of our universe.  A pure white beam of light reveals its inner essence.   

Most people can name the seven visible colors of the rainbow's spectrum. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.  Of course, there are two other colors, often forgotten, but always present, ultraviolet and infra-red.

Animals and insects feel these colors.  Plants sense them, too.  While we lack the same receptors and are blind to their existence, our handicap cannot negate their influence. 

The ultras and infras of plants are magical substances, indeed!  They include plant chemicals, or phyto chemicals, such as isoflavones and bioflavonoids.  Science teaches us
that plants protect themselves from attack with their own secretions and chemical messengers.  Vegetables repel insects who would eat them, and blossoms attract other 
insects with a perfume so that their pollens can be spread and their species self-propagate. Plants protect themselves from too much heat, or cold, or wind, or too much moisture, maintaining their own good health with their specialized hormones.  Plants can cure their own sicknesses and cancers by secreting and bathing themselves with these enchanted essences.

When we eat the plants, we are similarly protected.  Modern science has confirmed the centuries-old traditions and lore from cultures that refined the sacred techniques of using foods as medicine.

TODAY'S PERFECT RAINBOW

Eat foods of color. The perfect color can be found right in the middle of our rainbow, the color green.  There is a pot of gold and jewels within that rainbow, and these treasures so contained can be cashed in to purchase good health.

Eat green for wellness. 

In the 1980s, scientists first began to explore how phytochemicals prevent cancers.  A great
amount of emphasis was placed upon the fruits and vegetables that contain vibrant colors. The best known of these wonder drugs was recognized as beta carotene.  That's what gives carrots their bright orange hue.

In the 1990s, scientists at the University of Minnesota (Steinmetz, et. al.) categorized
different groups of fruits and vegetables demonstrating life giving, disease fighting qualities. In doing so, they defined some of those magic colors, and the phytochemicals so contained within those pigments.

SOME OF THE MAGICAL COLORS

The violet, indigo and blues of the plant kingdom include phenols and dithiolthiolnines 
contained in eggplant, cruciferous vegetables, grapes, plums, and grains.
 
Eat onions and shallots, leeks, scallions and garlic for cancer-fighting alliums.  Those
green leafy vegetables contain flavonoids, and inositol is found in beans.  Green fruits
and veggies contain phenols, and plant sterols, protease inhibitors and saponins.

Yellow limonines contained in citrus fruit and squash have also been identified as cancer
fighters, as have the orange carotines in carrots, and my all-time favorite vitamin pill, the 
cantaloupe.  Balancing out the rainbow's spectrum would be the red phenols in peppers, radishes, and tomatoes.
 
Tens of thousands of unique substances have been identified, and there are still plant hormones and enzymes yet to be discovered. 

Remarkably, the one plant containing the greatest amount of these wonderful phytochemicals is the soybean.  Soybeans contain coumarins, flavonoids, inositol, isoflavones, lignans, phenols, plant sterols, protease inhibitors, saponins, and Omega 3 and Omega 6 oils.

For many years, it has been said that "an apple a day keeps the doctor away."  Such wisdom!  Each day of one's life should reflect a lifestyle that includes this maxim:

For the best of health eat a rainbow today! 

Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com  

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