The Red, Green, Purple, Orange and White Diet

I recall an interview with 1964 Olympic 10,000m winner Billy Mills of the USA where he discussed his diet eating habits.

Mills came from a First Nation or Native American heritage, and I liked his approach to choosing the right foods.

His secret was eating foods that contained the colors red, green, brown, yellow, and white. As well, he chose foods coming from the air, water, and ground.

On a 4 day cycle, he would eat from the 3 different “dead” groups, and every fourth day was vegetarian. He classified air, water, and ground as “dead” foods which can be anywhere from goose (air), beef, chicken or turkey (ground) and fish (water).  This is a smart way of eating to preserve your ecosystem and food chain!

For fruits and vegetables, he would eat fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and legumes from the 5 colours above.

But wait, we have other colours to choose from!

The Red, Green, Purple, Orange and White Diet

In this infographic from Precision Nutrition, we see 5 common colours, the first 3 are the same (red, green, white) and the only difference is purple & orange instead of yellow and brown.

Click here to see the full infographic, or click on the image.

What Color Is Your Diet?: The 7 Colors of Health

What Color Is Your Diet? by David Heber was published in 2001 and you can easily buy the book used for $0.01.

David Heber is a MD and Ph.D and the director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. He has coded plant foods into seven colours, all of which have different health-protecting qualities:

red, red-purple, orange, orange-yellow, yellow-green, green, and white-green.

Most Americans eat far too few foods with any color in them. Instead, we tend to eat a high-fat, highly processed “beige diet” full of snack foods and refined grains (i.e. bread, cake, pastries) that don’t fit the requirements of our genes. The typical American diet features the brown and beige colors of meat and starches with fruits and vegetables often nowhere in sight.