Healthy Foods We Eat

We really do eat these foods -- hooray for us! A recent article stated that a variety of veggies, fruits and nuts battled it out for the top spot on a new list of the 20 most antioxidant-rich foods, ranked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The list of foods "has a relative ranking of the capacity of foods to interfere with or prevent oxidative processes and to scavenge free radicals." (or in plain English, prevent cancer!) So, after reading the list, a multiple bean salad with artichoke hearts on top, and a giant, colorful fruit salad with nuts would do the trick! And you can get all this stuff in one trip to Trader Joe's!

Their Top 20:
Small red beans (dried).
Wild blueberries.
Red Kidney beans.
Pinto beans.
Blueberries (cultivated).
Cranberries.
Artichokes (cooked).
Blackberries.
Prunes.
Raspberries.
Strawberries.
Red Delicious apples.
Granny Smith apples.
Pecans.
Sweet cherries.
Black plums.
Russet potatoes (cooked).
Black beans (dried).
Plums.
Gala apples.

We also try to eat with the colors of the rainbow. For example, lutein with some of the yellow pigments found in corn; orange can be the pigments from the carotenoid family that are found in cantaloupe, butternut squash and mango; red could come from things like lycopene, found in tomatoes and watermelon. And then the darker colors -- the purples, blues, in berries.