Go Green...Red, Yellow, and Orange!

These days our hectic lifestyles make it more and more difficult to take the time to prepare healthy, complete, meals and snacks. Of course ideally we’d all get our ‘Five a Day’ of fruits and vegetables - ideally more than five - but unless you plan your shopping well and make time to plan and prepare meals and snacks with a wide variety of nutrients, you just won’t be getting all of the goodness from foods that is ideal.

In particular, beyond just getting enough vitamins and minerals, optimum health depends upon getting a variety of ‘phytochemicals’ - nutrients found in plants which, while not essential for life (like vitamins), are essential to keep our bodies healthy. Scientists have identified hundreds of these phytochemicals, such as the polyphenols (in green tea, berries and chocolate), carotenoids (in fruits, vegetables and berries), prebiotics (found in most fibrous foods) and glucosinolates (found mostly in cruciferous vegetables). All of these are associated multiple health benefits when consumed in the diet.

So if you are one of the majority of busy people these days who probably don’t hit their ideal requirement for these nutrients, probably the best solution is taking a ‘greens’ supplement. Actually calling them ‘greens’ is a bit misleading, many of the ingredients are red, yellow, orange, brown, etc but regardless of the colour, a well-formulated greens product can supply a vast array of phytochemicals - even more than you could easily get from a very diverse, well-planned diet.

These products like Green Superfood by Amazing Grass, Good Green Stuff by Nuzest, Performance Greens by PhD Nutrition and others each contain 20+ ingredients which are sources of the whole gambit of the aforesaid phytochemicals all in one convenient, easy-to-mix powder that won’t go off in the fruit bowel or the fridge within five or six days!