Bring Colour into your Life – and onto your Plates

Eating multi-coloured meals every day can contribute to your health and wellbeing – and colourful autumn recipes can also brighten your mood. Fruit, veggies and herbs come in all shades from common colours such as yellow, orange, red, and green, all the way to purple, blue and even black. “Eat a rainbow every week”, nutrition experts recommend. The different colours aren’t only a treat for the eyes, but the secondary plant substances that add colour to vegetables also each stimulate different healthy processes within our body. Some of them have anti-inflammatory effects, others boost the immune system or have beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system.

This means that eating a rainbow every week doesn’t only make for aesthetically pleasing dishes, it also contributes to your health and vitality. How about some inspiration on how to colour up your weekly nutrition plan?

What could be more mouth-watering than the view of brightly red, fresh strawberries or tomatoes? We owe this appetising view to the plant pigment lycopene. It’s what gives strawberries, tomatoes, watermelons, chilis, and the like their distinctive red colour. Among other things, lycophene can strengthen the body's immune system and is said to have protective influences against various illnesses like rheumatism, arthritis, heart attacks and strokes. Finally, the little red helpers can prevent cell changes and thus can inhibit tumor development. So, every time you are snacking some tomato salad or fresh strawberries, you are actually actively helping your body fight off bad influences. Isn’t that cool?

Obviously, the first orange fruits that come to mind are oranges. They have established their reputation as boosters of our immune system thanks to their high levels of vitamin C. However, vitamins are not all that oranges have to offer. Yellow and orange colours in fruits and veggies come from the natural colourant cartenoid. Researchers have found that the pigment can boost your immune system, digestion and metabolism. Additionally, it’s supposed to slow down the skins aging.

For your daily dose of carotenoids you can therefore start the day with a delicious orange smoothie made of pineapple, bananas, mangos, and fresh orange juice. For more delicious smoothie recipes, check our VitaBar App. By the way: In the app, you can even filter recipes according to their colour.

Natural green foods owe their appearance to the probably best known natural colourant: chlorophyll. It’s responsible for the plants’ green colour and is an essential part of photosynthesis – the transformation of carbon dioxide into oxygen. It also gives colour to our fruits and vegetables – for example apples, pears and kiwis as well as green peppers, spinach and green cabbage. The small, green pigments can also help the human body build new blood cells and muscles. Moreover, chlorophyll is said to have a cleasing and detoxifying effect and helps prevent dementia and diabetes. Finally, it can be a useful measure against iron or magnesium deficiency. Small pigments – with big impact!

Feeling green? Try our green bean and lemon grass noodle soup. The Bosch Cookit, our kitchen machine with cooking function, easily guides you through the cooking process – yumminess guaranteed. Don’t feel like cooking? No problem. Try our healthy green salad bowl with avocado dressing. If you want to add some extra greens to your dish, our Bosch SmartGrow Life indoor gardening system provides you with fresh and tasty herbs all-year round.

Blue and violet might not be the first colours that come to mind when we think of fresh food. Nevertheless, there is a variety of delicious and healthy fruit and veggies naturally coloured in these hues. They owe their unusual shades to the natural colourant anthocyane. A particle that gets under your skin, as the violet pigments are said to have a preventive effect on skin aging and positively impact blood vessels. They are small anti-aging miracles. In addition, they can contribute to improving vision and memory, and also have anti-inflammatory effects.

So, next time you find yourself in front of the fruit and veggies section at the supermarket and wonder what to buy – why not go for blueberries, blue grapes, figs, beetroot, black olives or eggplants? You might want to get some red cabbage (which is actually a kind of purple), too, to try our roasted red cabbage with goat cheese and bacon. A blueberry smoothie is a great option to get you daily dose of blue and violet, too. Our Bosch blenders and juicers ensure optimal creamy consistencies.

White fruits and veggies lack any kind of colour pigment. However, they’re key to a balanced diet as they contain many valuable vitamins and minerals. Especially onions and garlic hold the healthy substance allicin that gives them their typical smell. It’s said to prevent cancer, infections and cardio-vascular diseases.

In order to complete your rainbow diet with some white fruits and veggies you can include apples, bananas, asparagus, celery, cauliflower, onions or garlic to your meal plan.

The different colours not only affect your health – they also have an impact on our eating behaviour and taste expectations. Red, orange and yellow is what we instinctively prefer right from birth. These colours have an appetising effect since they signal ripeness and taste to our brain. In contrast, green and blue rather represent bitterness making them our less preferred colours in food. We’ve learned and internalised these signals over decades of human development. Knowing that we need all the shades, we better start introducing our tastebuds to the rainbow.