The Rainbow Diet with Dr. Deanna Minich- Nourishing You Podcast

What do you like? Tell me what you like.

There's value in that because it almost gives the brain like a vacation, right?

Holistic health is completely underappreciated, but so critical.

Eating whole foods. And the key is just to find.

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Welcome to the NANP Nourishing youg Podcast. I'm Kristin Burkitt.

And I'm Diana Walley. We're your hosts for NANP's podcast dedicated to connecting holistic health enthusiasts with each other to share practical information from the holistic wellness space for an enhanced vitality.

Diana and I are master Nutrition Therapists, Board Certified in holistic nutrition with private practices and an online joint venture that supports clients and practitioners as they strive to reach their full potential. We're honored to be hosting this podcast for NANP and connecting our listeners with the latest in holistic wellness.

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Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Nourishing you podcast. We have an amazing show for you today featuring Dr. Deanna Minick, who will teach us about the connection between vibrant color and optimal health. Deanna Minick, Ph.D. is a nutrition scientist, educator and author with over 20 years of experience in academia and in the natural product industries. Currently serving as Chief Science Officer at Symphony Natural Health, she has been an active functional medicine clinician in clinical trials and in her own practice, Food and Spirit. She is the author of six consumer books on wellness topics, four book chapters, and over 50 scientific publications. Through her talks, workshops, groups and in person retreats, she helps people to transform their lives practically and artfully through nutrition and lifestyle. Welcome Dr. Minnick. Thanks for being here. We're happy to have you.

Hello ladies. Great to be here with both of you.

Dr. Minick, you have such a unique approach to nutrition which incorporates getting colorful, which is so fun to achieve long term optimal health. We we can't wait to learn how color can improve our lives. But first, we'd love to hear about your journey into the functional medicine world and a little background about how you discovered a connection between color and wellness.

Oh my goodness. Color. You know, what I found through my own experience was that color was a way for me to connect to food. That was much more of an artful way rather than only thinking about the science. And where that really comes from is just from my youth. So I grew up with a mother, who was what I would call at the time, a health nut. So I grew up in the 1970s, and it really wasn't cool to be into food and eating, but my mom was into people like Adele Davis, Richard Simmons. And so I was a different kid at school with the brown bread sandwiches, and everybody else had Wonder Bread. So talk about color. It started way back, and then I kind of had my own health issues as a teenager. I did have some disordered eating, and I think it came from a lot of the restriction that was imposed upon me and kind of my. My whole mental, emotional experience of food and where that landed. But I would say it took me to a good place because I did learn to create a strategy in a way that connected to food that was much more, I would say, sustainable and artful. So that happened more or less in my. In my 20s, I went on to graduate school. I decided to study nutrition. And then I eventually went on for my PhD and when I was working through my doctoral research, well, first of all, even back up to my masters, which was on carotenoids. And carotenoids are the colorful compounds in plants. So at that time, I had become connected to what was starting to emerge as functional foods, bringing in a lot of these plant compounds to foods as ingredients. So I became interested at that time around plant compounds, colorful compounds. And then when I was kind of, I would say, going through some things during my PhD, more from a mental emotional perspective, I started to paint, and I started to paint bright colors, and I would paint these shapes and spirals and, you know, certain colors I would paint more than others. And so it just became this therapy for me. And then eventually, I would say I merged everything together. So I finished my PhD, I went off to work. I basically began in a food industry, in a food manufacturer. I then went to work with Dr. Jeffrey Bland, and. And I entered into the world of dietary supplements. And Dr. Jeffrey Bland is the father of functional medicine. And that opened my eyes to this whole other realm of thinking about root causes, getting to know about metabolic detoxification, which I wasn't trained in in school, even when I studied nutrition, not in this way. So I would say that there were a lot of emerging topics and perspectives and concepts that really opened up to me. And by way of working with Dr. Bland and opening up to functional medicine, and I would say, where everything got put together, it was really the emergence of looking at color as a tool for healing. So not just physical healing through phytonutrients, but also mental, emotional healing. Through what color could open up from a psychological perspective. In fact, that's one of the things that I feel is so important for nutrition professionals, is how can we bring together the physical and the psychological aspects of healing through food? And I would say that the seven systems of health that I created and that I write about in my books was the operating system. It was the amalgamation of my life experience, my study, and my work experience, my research experience, and putting all of that together into color as a way to connect people with food in a. I would say, a broader way than they were used to.

It just feels good thinking about all of the color.

Right?

Like, I mean, yeah, you just think about it. When your brain starts to light up, you want to connect to different things. So I can see so many connections there. What a fabulous opportunity that was to work with Dr. Bland early in your career. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I can see how you've taken that and used it so successfully. You've authored so many books, and perhaps the one you're best known for is the rainbow diet. So maybe we could kind of start with that. And, you know, I think a lot of us understand, we hear all the time we need to eat our greens, we need to eat our veggies, but, you know, we know that it's not enough just to eat green. We need more than that to maintain our health. Rainbow isn't just green. So we want. We got to go broader than that. So could you give us an overview of what. What does that mean to eat the rainbow, and why is that important just at a fundamental level for our body, mind, and spirit, like the whole triad there?

So you're going to see that the way that I think is usually like a sandwich. There are layers. And so in a. In a purely physical way, eating the rainbow means getting each of the colors every day from foods that are whole and unprocessed. So typically that'll be fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs. For some people, if they do whole grains, legumes, a variety of different foods that are, again, whole. And on the psychological side of things, I would also say I have training as a yoga teacher.

So.

So when I wasn't taking science classes and nerding out, I was taking a lot of classes as it related to philosophy, literature, art history, not actually art, but art history. I was really intrigued with that. And so then I started to see that there was application of color to be used as a way to communicate something more emotional. So when I say eating the rainbow, it's to feed the rainbow within and the rainbow within is really this spectrum of emotions that we have and also the themes that play out in our lives. So it's almost like taking color therapy and taking the eating the rainbow concept and merging them together. And what I'm thinking we could do is we could actually go through each of the colors and I can give you a little window into that operating system which is, yes, seven systems of health. But we can go through each color just very briefly because every color has a connection to a theme in our lives. And there's no accident for the colors that we are drawn to, the colors we wear, colors that we surround ourselves in. So I guess before we start, what, what is the color for each of you that you feel connected to lately?

That's a good question.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a purple. I love blues and purples. Yeah, like a blue.

And I tend to gravitate, especially this time of year. I noticed mine change kind of seasonally when I'm attracted to. But right now it's like the yellows and the brighter oranges and fuchsias and those types of colors.

Ah, okay. So you're both very complementary. So warming colors. And Diana, you're saying more of the cooling colors. So I just, from a straight energy perspective, I just kind of look at, from an art perspective. Okay, warming, cooling, where, where are people moving into or what do they gravitate towards? So let's go through the colors a little bit. So red, red is the color of the immune system and inflammation. So in the color code that I talk about in the rainbow diet as well as in my whole detox book, and in fact, in the whole detox book, I go through a more on the science of color. Even though it's called whole detox, I could have called that book something else because it was very connected into the color principles. So for red, if we are exhibiting red in the body, typically that means inflammation ironically, or maybe not ironically, but maybe from a synchronicity point of view. What I've observed in nature is that red colored foods tend to have the nutritional agents, actives or even the phytonutrients that we need in order to help with things like inflammation. Not always, and it's not in a box. But in general, if we just look at kind of patterns in nature, I think of the polyphenols, a lot of the red colored foods are high in vitamin C or they're good for inflammation in the body. Like for example, lycopene, which is a red Colored phytonutrient. We find that in red foods tends to be good for things like heart related inflammation. So when I think of red, the science of red is about lots of emotion and typically it's about anger, volatility, but it can also be passion, vigor, and it's, you know, I don't know if you remember that phrase from, you know, when you go to an interview, wear a red suit, the power suit, right. There's red makes a statement, red gets us to respond. You know, you think of a stop sign, a red street light, an ambulance, a fire hydrant, it's all about evoking a response. And sometimes too much. Red is about stress. You know, the red of stress, the sympathetic response of the adrenal glands, which require many of the things that are used for inflammation and the immune system. So when I think of red foods, I think of cherries, raspberries, I think of strawberries. And you know, some of these foods are, they kind of, I would say they, they hinge upon being even pro inflammatory. So things like nightshades, goji berries, or red bell peppers, tomatoes, certain of these things can actually provoke inflammation. So I would say that when people are needing a bit of red, you know, sometimes when we're moving through the rainbow and I take people through online rainbow type courses, and so we start off in red and we talk about wearing red. We look for red in our environments. We make sure that we've got red on our plate and that we make sure that it's not the same red every day. You know, I think what happens with people, especially with red, and that's the system that I call the root, we get in a groove because we want that safety, we want to survive. We don't want to have to stress out. So we start eating the same foods all the time. So we might be eating the same color of food each time. So within red, I not only talk about phytonutrients and different nutritional components in food, but also some ways of how we can either center and ground or shake it up a little bit and get a little bit more variety. So that's red.

That's fun.

Yeah. What's next? Next one is orange. Now, Kristen, you said you mentioned you kind of like that warming kind of yellow, orange. In fact, lately I have been tuned into orange. In fact, I just posted on my Instagram, there was a study that just came out looking at orange fruits and lowering the risk of depressive symptoms. You know, certain orange fruits, like oranges and tangerines, papaya was on there. And there's something about orange that's very playful and flowing. And, you know, if you think of, you know, it's a warming color, it's not quite as bold as red. It's kind of soft. It's. It's more, you know, I think for people who really like orange or melon or pink, you know, they're very drawn to that. And then for others, they're not. You know, it's a kind of a polarizing color for some people. I know for me, that was part of my healing, that I did not like pink, I did not like orange. I would never wear those colors. But yet every time I went to go paint, I was painting orange and these pink spirals, and I would put them up all around in my environment. It was almost like orange had to come into me as a nutrient, but a visual nutrient, not, I would say, a food nutrient. And once I got into understanding a bit about orange and orange foods, I realized that there was a connection to reproductive health, a connection to hormones, a connection to, you know, if you look in nature, carotenoids, which are these. Some many times they are these orange compounds like the carotenes, they are connected to things like fertility. They're connected to things like even ovulation we have in the human ovary, we have a concentration of certain of these carotenoids. And at the time that I was experiencing this thing with orange and pink, I also had endometriosis. I had a whole number of different reproductive issues that I was working through, and I didn't put it all together until later. And that art, that exposure to orange and pink, that kind of. That combination. Right, the fuchsia that you mentioned, Kristen, kind of that combination was really helpful for me. And so whenever I'm feeling like I need more flow, I try to bring in things like orange fruits. And again, there is research looking specifically at women and how women can help to delay ovarian decline, and that there's even a connection with lowering the risk for endometriosis by having orange fruits. Citrus fruits. So, you know, there's some research out there. I did publish a paper on all of this, by the way. So for all of the nutrition professionals listening, you know, they don't have to be writing everything down. This is already published in the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, where I go through each color and the pattern that I have seen within those specific colors. But when I think orange, I do think reproductive health. I do think of our hormones, which I know we're Going to get into a little bit later and I think about a sense of play, a sense of warmth, a sense of that emotional warmth and going there when we feel stuck.

Dr. Minik, just a quick. This is so fascinating, but just a quick question. You talked about fruits and vegetables. Would this also apply to a beautiful orange egg yolk or like a beautiful piece of wild salmon that has that, you know, really deep color Is. It is with. So does this apply to those types of foods as well, or just fruits and vegetables?

No, actually, those. Those foods would apply and you know, where they're getting those colors from anyway would be the plants. So it's like it doesn't matter. But if we look at salmon, let's just go back, because that's an excellent one. And in fact, I have, for people that actually get this list, you will see that in this category, I have the foods and I have fish and seafood. And if we think of what goes well with carotenoids, it's a lot of these fats and fatty acids, the omega 3s, that complement kind of that same kind of structure that the carotenoids have. And these, again, are important for things like fertility and ovarian function, even sperm health. You know, kind of looking at the composite not alone, but in relationship too, there is a connection. And the reason why the yolk of an egg is so orange yellow is because of the lutein and even some of the other carotenoids that that chicken or that duck ate. So nature makes its way in. And so this is, this is not about being connected to a certain dietary approach like only eating plants. It's just that plants have a lot of these natural pigments where I did see a connection to different body systems.

Yeah, so you mentioned how. And I see this too, it's really easy to get into a rut and eat the kind of the same things all the time. What. How would you expand on that in terms of how many different. You said to try to get all different colors of the rainbow every day. Can you talk more about that? And, you know, I have some people that tell me, well, you know, I. If I go buy two or three vegetables, that's going to last me all week. So it doesn't really make sense to buy more than that. And, you know, I think there's another side to that. But what are your thoughts there on. On integrating some more of these colors?

Yes, that's a good question. Well, I have three principles. Color, creativity, and diversity. So with diversity, there is good literature to suggest that dietary Diversity is protective overall. So it's protective for the gut microbiome. It nourishes the gut microbiome to have more different foods coming in. And in fact, that is connected then to so many other things, whether it's different mood states, better nutritional status just because of that diversity. So when I think of a number. So how diverse should we really be eating? If you look ancestrally, we had access to something like 3,000 different plants, but now we have access to about 100 to 400 plants. Excuse me. So our supply is limited. Excuse me. But what we can aim for is something on the order of. I have a tickle in my throat.

Yeah, no, that's okay. Well, while you're having a sip of tea, I just wanted to say that, and correct me if I'm wrong, that this chart that you keep referring to, that you have with all the foods and the colors, and you can get that on your website. It's downloadable. Yeah. So everybody, first of all, you need to follow Dr. Minnick, buy all of her books, and follow her social media. But. But go to her website. It's such a beautiful website. And. And definitely you can download that chart. So you can follow along.

Yes. And then you can see all of the colors, because we won't get through them all. But you can see those associations.

We have to circle back to my colors, though, so don't forget about me.

We will. You're done. Okay. Okay. It's very relevant for most other people, too. It's the color that most people are omitting from their diet. But let me just go back again. Diversity. So how many unique botanical foods should we be getting in a week? In seven days, the estimates would say something on the order of more than 30. More than 30, and preferably probably around 55. 0. So making sure that we get different varieties of things. Let me just give everybody listening an example. So you know how sometimes when we go to the store, sometimes we're just on autopilot, and it's just like, okay, just give me the bag of apples. It's a lot easier. And I don't have to think. But if we just get a bag of apples, it's typically the same apple variety. So that really doesn't count as being diverse. That would be if you're creating a checklist, and I do have a variety checklist, that would only fall into one category and just count as one. So what you'd want to do to create diversity, in that case, let's just say that you ate apples. It was Apple season is you'd want to select from different varieties of apples. Let's just say instead of getting the bag of apples, you spent a minute and you took four different varieties of apples. So at least you're cultivating variety within that particular food. You can do the same with greens. That's another great way to incorporate variety. For example, if you get the lettuce that is more brown, purplish, you know, it's kind of that rust red color in addition to being green, that gives you additional phytonutrients. Right. Or you can do arugula. You know, there's so many different greens to choose from. Potatoes, that's another one. Purple potatoes, yellow potatoes, red potatoes. So instead of the same potato every time, again, diversifying the food within that particular category and also noting what I don't think many people are aware of is the power of eating in season. When we eat foods that are in season, they tend to be more nutritious. And we're learning about how some of the phytochemicals that are in seasonal foods may actually be keeping our body in rhythm with the seasonal changes. And we're seeing that specifically with a certain class of compounds called polyphenols. Polyphenols, typically, they're in red, blue, purple, black, and brown foods, but not exclusively. So you'll find them also in green foods and some other foods. But in general, these polyphenol compounds, they're what make food a little bit bitter. And that bitterness connects to the polyphenols and connects to function in the body. So it seems as though there is a connection of certain compounds at certain times of the year with helping the body again, to respond better to the seasonal changes that we would normally experience. And if we eat food out of season, it can sometimes backfire. At least we see that with some studies, some animals, some preclinical studies, in which they fed, for example, cherries out of season, and they show that it had an effect on things like storing fat in the body. Now, that is, you know, a certain amount over a certain duration, having foods out of season occasionally is not going to be too negative. But if you happen to have something over and over again, like if you're having oranges when it's winter and it's not a food that is in season, it may not give you the desired metabolic effect. So I kind of took the diversity message into seasonal eating, and I really. I just spoke on this at the Institute for Functional Medicine conference. This whole aspect of why we need to stay in rhythm, circadian rhythm, lunar rhythm, seasonal rhythm. And it's been shown that autoimmune diseases, they have flares, onsets, symptoms, and even relapses based on those seasons. And I think in part it's because of the different nutrients, whether it's the vitamin D, the melatonin at certain times of the year that have this kind of perturbation. Right. So this is why, you know, if I think of color, creativity, and diversity, I'm now adding a fourth one, which is rhythms, because it is really important. You know, even the lunar cycle in a menstruating woman, you know, she loses certain amounts of minerals throughout her cycle. She has certain levels of things like carotenoids throughout her cycle. And so how do we get into that mode of replenishing through the month? I mean, so many layers here, but take me wherever you want to go with that conversation. But diversity is key. And staying within that seasonal diversity is a further add on that can help people to have better wellness throughout the year.

I just think that it's such a good takeaway to Kristen's point because I see this as well. You know, I always have clients send me a diet diary before we meet. So just I can understand what they're eating. And it's 95% of the time it's the same thing day in and day out, which is what Kristen had mentioned. But I think it's such a great pearl to just say, yeah, if you like apples, just get a couple different kinds. Or get white potatoes one day, purple potatoes and the red ones. And that's something that I. I myself is particularly the potatoes. I was like, oh, yeah, I always pick up the, you know, the bag of the little yellow potatoes. So I'm going to get the purple ones next time. So those are. I was even thinking, like, carrots, you know, how they'll be purple carrots at the store sometimes, or lighter ones or orange ones. So that is such a great takeaway for our audience.

So.

And me, too, I have to say.

Well, if somebody hasn't had purple potatoes, they're like, those are my favorite. They're so good.

So good.

And they're beautiful.

Art.

And I often talk to people about how your plate is your palette, right? Not just like your palette and your taste, but it is your artistic palette. So I love to create the rainbow at the start of the day. My breakfast is like most people's dinners. So when I cook for my husband and I for our breakfast, I really try to just get the rainbow in, in the morning. As much as I can. I've got a little bit of this side of the blueberries, strawberries, the protein, whatever that is. But yeah, little tips like this can really have a huge impact.

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Okay, so we don't skip over Diana's colors. Can you talk about purple? Since we talked about purple potatoes, let's talk about the color purple.

I have to say that I cheated a little bit. I really do love blue and purple. But I did notice in your chat chart that dark chocolate was in one of those categories. And I do have a slight dark chocolate problem, as our listeners know. So yeah, talk to us about purple and blue.

Sure. So there was a survey that was done some years ago and it basically found that out of all of the different colors that people would eat, the color that was lacking the most was blue purple. In that particular survey, it was shown that 88% of people did not get their daily quotient of blue purple. So there was a gap, a nutrient gap. The reason I also put brown foods many times within the purple blue category is because brown, blue and purple and even black, they share some common phytochemicals. So when it comes to things like cocoa and chocolate, some of the flavonoids contain. There are also in some of the blue purple foods. So getting the blue purple is good for the brain, it's good for memory learning, it's good for mood and just ensuring better mood and less depression and anxiety. I'm sorry, I'm having another coffee. That's okay.

That's okay. So you were saying that many people don't incorporate enough of these foods. Is that because the list of foods is smaller? I mean, I'm thinking of blueberries, obviously. You said chocolate. We talked about purple potatoes. There's eggplant. Does that Count because it's purple on the outside, but I don't think a.

Lot of people eat.

I like eggplant, but I don't think a lot of people are eating eggplant. Is that why there's just a limited number of those foods or.

Yes. And as I like to say, purple is regal, it's rare, it's precious. So whenever you see purple varieties in stores, so whether it's a purple carrot, a purple potato, purple cauliflower, purple broccoli, that would be the variety to get, because that's not always in season. So you're absolutely right, Diana, that it's not always present. And so when it is present again, there could be a seasonal aspect to it. So we look at grapes being in season at a certain time. Right. And grapes are very rich in these polyphenols. So, yes, that is part of the reason. And I think then we have to make even more, I would say, creative attempts to try to get those foods, whether it's blueberries, blackberries. And it's a good thing that many of these things can be taken in, in their frozen format, so we don't always have to have them fresh. And as far as how to count foods. So you were asking about eggplant. This is a good question. And I think when people are thinking, like, practically, how do I actually count up the rainbow? In some cases, you can actually get two colors. So let's just take a cucumber is all around green, so that counts as green. But an apple, let's just go back to apple, because this is. And then I'll do the eggplant. An apple, let's just say it's a green apple, a Granny Smith apple, It counts as green, and it counts as white. The flesh and the peel are two different colors. So you would count each of those. The eggplant would count as purple, and then the flesh kind of the. The white yellow color or sometimes a little bit of the tan. Right.

Do you only get to count it.

If you eat it?

Right? Like the flesh.

Like, you'd have to eat that to.

Count the color, right?

Yes, you have to be able to. And in fact, unfortunately, many people take off the peel of different foods, and that's where you have most of the medicine of that plant is within the peel, the outer layer. In fact, even lettuce, you know, when lettuce or cabbage, you know, you kind of have this tight ball, the leaves towards the middle, towards the inside, actually have less phytonutrients than the leaves on the outside. So it's better, if at all possible, to use the leaves on the outside and even more so to have lettuce that is not in a tight configuration like that. Right. Like, I have some lettuce growing outside right now, and it is one of those kind of like bib lettuce where it's open. That's actually a way to maximize phytonutrients, because then all parts of that lettuce are exposed to the sun, exposed to the environment, and that is seen by the plant as stress. So then the entire plant starts to make phytochemicals to help with its survival. So, yes, I think it's important to note the peel and how important and relevant that is. And by way of saying that we also need to clean that part of the plant before we eat it, because that's often the part of the plant that is more contaminated. And even organically grown food can also be contaminated. Right.

So to clean it. Yeah. And so what. What is the. The system more that the purple connects to the purples and the blues? We talked about not many in that category, but what. What more emotionally or physically within the body do we see that connection?

Oh, so blue purple is about the brain.

Oh, brain.

Right. Okay. Right. So it's about. And if we kind of take it beyond that, I would say it's about intuition, it's about visualization, and it's about moods, memory, learning. And so. And I also put in here sleep, reflection. It's. Yeah, I would say it's. It's a brainy color, but it's also a very intuitive color. And so I often talk about food and mood. I talk about emotional eating as it connects to this center. But, you know, it's so funny because whenever I'm asking audiences what their favorite colors are, it's usually green, blue, and purple. I don't get a lot of the people that say orange, red, and yellow. So these cooling colors, you know, we tend to gravitate to them just in our environments, but not as much in our foods. Right. So that I do think it's important to come back to blue purple, because there are some good studies on things like Concord grape juice, blueberries, and grapes. Grapes is another very popular one that has been well studied, showing benefits for cognition, benefits for, you know, and this is in healthy adults, it's in older adults, and even in children. So in. Blueberries are unique from a functional perspective because you can ask the question, well, why are they helping with learning and memory and mood? What is it doing? Well, if you start to nerd out on some of the science. What you see is that yes, they're antioxidants. Yes, there could be some gut brain effects going on there. Like for example, some of the bacteria in the gut will start to break down some of these compounds in blue purple foods and then that can create a changed effect in the brain. But what I find to be really interesting is that there's also an effect on what is called bdnf, brain derived neurotropic factor. And for most people, they won't know what this is. This is a growth factor for neuron, for neurons. So the nerve cells can better grow and you know, just become more resilient with some of the compounds that are in these blue purple foods. So it's kind of like miracle grow for the brain or miracle grow for the nerve, the neurons, the nerves. So they must be doing something functionally, whether anatomically, lodging into certain parts of the brain, which that has been shown in animals and then separately physiologically having an impact on, on function. And I don't think we quite understand how it's all working, but there are studies looking at blue purple foods and brain function and again looking at that in the way of learning memory, cognitive tests. And so in my refrigerator, sometimes people will ask about juice. And I do keep a couple of juices on hand and one of them is Concord grape juice. I also have pomegranate juice. And you know, I feel, I mean, as most nutritionists listening will say, like, oh, well, that's a lot of sugar. But if you look at the studies, there are a number of studies looking at taking in juice, concentrated phytochemicals, and in small amounts with a meal I think can be appropriate. So, you know, in certain kinds of juices, you know, not the orange juice, the apple juice, but you know, certain ones that again are blue purple. You know, sometimes I'll, I'll get a combination of blueberry and grape. So I'm getting the best of both of those within that juice. But of course I think it's best to have the whole foods whenever, whenever one can. I mean, that would be the, the preference. But if you have to choose, and you know, if you're choosing a lower quality type of drink versus the juice, I think the juice can provide some merit.

Better than soda. Absolutely.

Yeah. And I was thinking like, have it like mix it with a little sparkling water. That sounds so good. Like a little spritzer. Sounds very good.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, so we know you have, you know, a hard stop. Do we Want to go over a few more colors? Do we want to talk about some spices? What. Where do you guys want to go?

I would love to talk about spices, because I think this is a great way that. That you promote Dr. Minick about being able to get that variety in the diet. Because I think some people, you know, when they hear 30 to 50 foods, you know, like colors of foods a week, they. They glaze over and check out because, like, there's no way they're putting 50 different fruits and vegetables in their cartoon. But there's other ways to get those colors in by way of maybe spices and herbs. So let's. Can we talk about that a little bit? Because I think that really opens the door for people.

Yes. And, you know, I just did a whole two hour podcast with Drew Perrott where he asked me all kinds of questions about spices. So this is. I'm so glad that you asked me about it. And it's one of the ways that is cost effective in a way to get more nutrient density, and it's through the spices. And with tea, actually, I don't want to leave tea out, because black tea, green tea, herbal teas, the longer you steep them, the more of those phytochemicals you're getting. And in some cases, you can rival a serving of vegetables just from tea. And in some cases, coffee, too, if it's a good coffee. You know, it's not adulterated with mycotoxins and different other contaminants. Coffee is actually chock full of phytochemicals. So I think that there can be. Of course, we have to personalize this message. Right? But let's move into spices, because, you know, when I think of the rainbow, the rainbow can apply to spices as well. So when I think of red, you know, what is a common one? You know, I think of cayenne pepper or some kind of chili powder, if people can tolerate that. When I think of orange, I think of turmeric. And I was telling Drew that I have my favorite curry spice. I have a curry powder with 11 different spices in it. So that already is more diversity. Usually curry powders are five to six spices, not 11. So, you know, I'm always looking at the label, like, okay, how many can I get in this one? Yellow could be ginger. Ginger is a great spice to incorporate. Green could be anything from oregano, dill, rosemary. Those are some of my favorites. The brown could be cinnamon, which is great for insulin sensitization. It's good. It's so perfect that it's it can be put with a dessert that can bring down kind of the blood sugar response. Right. When I think of white, you know, I can think of garlic or even I'm thinking of, like, good quality salt, like a Himalayan crystal salt. Right. That is mineral rich. And I know you're thinking blue, purple. Diana, you're thinking, well, what would you know? Could be lavender buds. You know, there aren't a lot of blue, purple spices per se, but, you know, something like that. A culinary lavender could be incorporated as well. So that would be the rainbow of. And I've done these rainbows, a rainbow of tea, rainbow of spices, and how you can bring in the rainbow in a variety of these different ways. So if somebody says, you know what, this is just too much. I can't get the rainbow every day. That's just too much to focus on. I'm just going to have to stick with brown, yellow, and white for most of my day, because that's where I can go. What I would say is start with tea. Just get. If you can, just like three teas of different colors. Like, the red could be rooibos. Like a rooibos tea. Right. The green tea. I mean, there are so many studies on green tea. And I have a friend who does not like green tea, and she's a nutritionist. And so we talk about it, and she's like, I just can't take it, but I know it's so good for me. So what she does is she steeps the green tea for as long as she can, because, of course, you want to make it bitter. Bitter is, in this case, better. So then she uses the green tea cool down as a base for her smoothie, where she layers into it, all kinds of other things, which I think is a great idea.

Great idea. I love that.

Great idea. I have to tell.

Yeah.

Oh, I was just gonna say that. It just reminded me with the green tea. So a couple of weeks ago, my daughters are home from college. We went to this kind of bougie coffee shop, and we love matcha. And so they had matcha, but you could get a strawberry matcha. So they pureed organic strawberries.

And.

And so when they presented the cup to you, the bottom was this beautiful green color of the matcha layered with this beautiful strawberry. I mean, it was. It was outrageous. And it's funny because it must be innate. I mean, we all looked at it and we're like, that is so beautiful. You know, just the colors were very bright, and it was really good, too.

And see how you acknowledge like, the beauty of the food. And I feel like so. So many people are just so focused in the head about how much am I eating? Is this the right food? Am I going to be gluten? I feel like what happened for me, being in that place of analysis, paralysis growing up, is I had to move into this space of finding the beauty, finding the art, finding the spirituality of food in the eating experience to kind of get me to the next level. So I. That's. I'm just saying that because of how you just commented on that Matcha drink, right? You're saying, oh, how beautiful it looked. You know, how do we connect more with our senses and make food more of that artistic, soulful experience? I think that that's really what the rainbow is about. You know, of course, I want people eating fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, and bringing in all of this food is medicine. But then I also think that there's an additional point of this, which is how do we fall in love with our food in a way that we appreciate it, we want to grow it. We. Like going to the grocery store. I remember, like, years ago, I would tell my husband, I'm like, I'm going for my date night to the grocery store. It was Saturday night. I just wanted my alone time in the produce section. I just wanted to take my time and look at the oranges. I wanted to see, smell the oranges. And, you know, I feel like so much of the rainbow is about the spectrum of who we are as people, right? It's not just we have to feed our body. It's like, no, we need to make food an emotional connection. Whether it's an emotional connection with the farmer, the store, the people, the experience of eating that food, you know, and then also I would say the mental aspects, you know, the intellectual aspects, the heart aspects, you know, giving thanks, giving gratitude. This is so. This is not to be, I think, under acknowledged. I think it's so important to look at not just what we eat, but how, when, why, how much, and with whom. And again, I feel like there's a bigger context here that the rainbow is really connected into.

Look, I. The word that I. You just said it again, but I just want to emphasize it, that word, connection. Because I feel like in our society, in terms of eating, we've lost so much connection that we've gotten to the point where we're putting calories in our mouths, but we're not connecting with food in this bigger, broader picture and everything that that brings to the table. And, you know, I hear people complain that, well, if I eat healthy food, you know, it's. It's just. It's not fun, you know, and they don't like healthy food. But when you start to appreciate it for what it is and who grew it and what it took to get to your plate and preparing it and smelling it and all of that, when you finally, you know, walk away from the fast production and you appreciate what's really on your table there and connect to it, it enhances not only the pleasure of eating the meal, but it also enhances the digestibility of that meal and our ability to. To have the nutrient absorption from that meal. It connects so much deeper than just what we see on the plate. And so, I don't know, I just wanted to bring out that word connection again, because it, it's a. It's a theme and it's a line that goes from the time that seed is planted all the way through till we're able to actually use that nutrient in our body.

Yes, you said that really beautifully. That it's a web, right? Yeah, it's a web. And again, I. I feel like it's a web in nature. It's a way that we align to the rhythms, to plans. And plants are really smart because they're stationary. They have to stay put and survive. So we get so much intelligence just by connecting in. So, and we connect with people when we eat with other people. And, you know, I was just looking at a study last night, as a matter of fact, showing that when older people, and usually as we get older and, you know, people lose friends or, you know, just because every. Their social circle can shrink. But when people that were older were eating together, they had greater dietary diversity. I believe this study was done in Japan. I can't remember the exact location, but it was interesting because if we're having better dietary diversity, we're going to have better nutritional status. Like, everything kind of stacks up. So it's kind of like, where does it start? Does it start with a sense of community and eating with others? And I think that we have to be thinking about how we eat with others and who we eat with, because much of who we eat with will determine our eating preferences. Right. And in fact, when I was in clinical practice and seeing people one on one, I soon came to realize that one person sometimes would have a difficult time within the family or within the larger structure, the family structure that they were in. So I'd often have to go to their home to work with everybody and to figure out, well, how do we actually make this work for the entire family. Everybody has different positions and there's resistance to certain things. And I found that eating the rainbow was one of the ways to connect everybody. I could talk to a 5 year old about eating the rainbow.

I could talk to a 50 year.

Old, I could talk to an 80 year old, I can talk to a 20 year old. It was all the same. And it, It's a good place to start. Right. It's a way to gamify and to make food fun and less onerous.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

You know, and what's so fabulous about our audience connecting with you today is you offer such great resources to help people do that. So would you like to share some of those resources that our audience might tap into? Whether it's your books, your website, what. What can our audience tap into to?

Sure. Well, on my website, which is deannaminick.com There is a tab that says resources. Exactly what you said, Kristen. And under that resources tab, you can see that I've got a number of different downloads. And one of them that I have is an Eat the Rainbow kit. And the Eat the Rainbow kit is in three parts. The first part is just an explanation. The second part is a tracker, and then the third part is a shopping list. And I think that that would be something to get people underway and going with this whole concept of what we've been talking about this last hour. Because, you know, I think rather than just taking in too much, because what I've also seen is people always feel like there's a new thing, there's a shiny object out there somewhere, and then they have FOMO fear of missing out. They're like, well, maybe I should be doing this or that. I often say, why not just start with something that is so fundamental, tried and true? You know, it's not just me saying to eat the rainbow. I mean, this kind of, you know, whether it's a slogan or phrase or mantra, you know, it's been out there for some time. Right. I just brought it probably more in the functional medicine sphere, but it's been out there and we know that it's got benefits, health benefits. And I think that what most people don't realize is that the newer research on eating fruits and vegetables is that it can help with greater happiness, greater creativity, greater curiosity, just an overall sense of less psychological stress. And these are more of the mental health benefits of eating colorful foods. You know, I had a woman who went through one of my programs, and this has happened over and over again. When people start focusing on color and they start eating colorful foods, they start dressing differently. I've had people, I remember one woman specifically, who worked in an office in a gray cubicle. And after going through this, she couldn't take it anymore. She had to rainbow fi her cubicle. So she did that in her own way. I had another woman who. She had a charcoal gray sofa in her living room, and she had to redo her living room because it was just too, too dark for her. Sometimes people start just dressing differently. They start doing their home environments differently. So I think it's fun. I think it's a fun journey to see where eating the rainbow can take you. Because you might be surprised, you might think it's just about having seven colors on the plate throughout the day, but you actually may start to transform at other levels that you might not anticipate. And I say that because I've seen it happen over and over and over again with people.

It's kind of interesting how the monochrome look of homes and design, it seems to have trended with people not eating as much color and, you know, all of that. And I'm hoping that this conversation. And as we go forward, if people start broadening their diets, maybe we'll see less of that monochrome and we'll see a little bit more. More color in our lives all around.

Or maybe, you know, people can even start to paint. I mean, you can have monochromatic walls that have lots of different art and all kinds of different aspects, right? And so I think people really getting into their spaces when they start to work on their food, because you know what, they also just feel better. And when you feel better, then you have more energy to do that kind of thing. That feels more like it's not a must have. It's a nice to have to be able to do those kinds of things. So people's creativity just starts to come out when they start eating better. That's another side effect of eating the rainbow. So you might start to get creative. And people will say to me, deanna, tell me more about your art and how can I do more art? It may not be art. It might be singing. It might be, you know, dance. It might be some other type of creative expression. It doesn't have to be visual for me. It's just been visual. I think for others, you can have color through musical notes and even, you know, you can get very creative with all kinds of different artistic displays and how to perceive color through that. Or maybe it's, you know, essential oils and connecting into the plant in that way, you know, so don't put any limitations or constraints on the rainbow. I kind of feel like whatever is within you and needing to express by eating these colors and being more attentive. See color as a nutrient. A nutrient for the body, a nutrient for the soul. A nutrient for allowing you to realize potential.

That's such a great way to end. That was beautiful. Color is a nutrient. I'm writing that down in colorful pen. And also, also I love your word of Rainbow Fi. So we want everybody to Rainbow Fi. Remember, color is a nutrient. And we can't thank you enough for joining us today. You're a breath of fresh air. Such a unique perspective, but a simple one that I think is going to be really easy for everybody to adopt. So thank you so much Dr. Minik for being with us today and thank you everybody else for joining us. We always appreciate you. And until next time.

Time.

Take care. Thank you.

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