Fruits and vegetables are one of the keys to a healthy diet.3 colors a day

Go RED is a campaign worldwide for women’s health. It is about heart disease – strategies for treatment and prevention are often set from studies on men. It is widely known in the medical world that male and female heart disease present them different. (I can write more about heart disease another time)

Anyway, at this year’s Go RED event in Malmö we were treated with some very nice presentations.

One presentation I liked a lot was by dietitian Elisabeth Stoltz Sjöström, Umeå, Sweden. She introduced an easy way of thinking to the audience. She talked about 3 things – fats, antioxidants and fibers. I will stick to no 2 – the antioxidants in this text. The molecules that help the cells repair when damaged. They are one of the keys to a healthy diet.

There are numerous pills, diets, methods telling us what we need – vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, the list can be as long as you want. IF we are to take one pill to substitute for each and one of all these things we would get satiated from pills – no space left for real food. And you will still have the feeling you have forgotten some detail.

I find this way of looking at the issue tiring. It makes life complicated and full of “must do” and guilt. That is why I liked this dietitian so much. She had the same message that I always give. It is better to eat real food. Different colors in the fruit/vegetable mean they contain different molecules, read antioxidants. So instead of trying to remember which vitamin, trace element or antioxidant is in which fruit/vegetable you can simply eat 3 colors a day. That will give you a variety of vitamins, trace elements and antioxidants and you can try to eat 3 other kinds the next day. The recommended amount is 500 grams = 5 fruits or portions of vegetables per day.

It is as simple as that – go by the colors! Once you start looking for new colors you will find good and tasty things you never heard of before.

Vitamin pills and other substitute pills shall of course be eaten if they are prescribed to you because of a proven deficiency. It may also be okay to eat supplements during a short time if you get i.e. the flu for a week or two and you can’t eat properly for some time. But it is good to get back to ordinary proper food as soon as possible because it is the fuel the body needs to get anabolic again after a malaise. The sooner you can start eat proper again the faster you will recover. Fruits and vegetables also contain good fibers – but that is another story and I can write about it some other time.

Talking about stories – do you want to hear my stories about health live? Hire me as speaker for your events – kick off, breakfast-, lunch- and evening meeting. We can also arrange a half/full day seminar with workshops. You decide the subject – I decide the content. Please contact for more information.

Keep smiling!