In March we celebrate St. Paddy’s Day, which brings to mind rainbows and enormous pots of gold. When it comes to your health, you amass treasure each time you eat the rainbow.

As we begin the month of March, we feel warmer weather coming and the approach of Spring. As our mood lightens, so too inevitably does our desire to eat lighter fare. It’s such a natural process we don’t even notice it. 

Now, you may be the kind of person who hates salad and refuses to eat it. That’s fine. 

But don’t turn away from the riches you could be amassing when you eat the rainbow without having all the information. 

When it comes right down to it, the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is literally your health. The rainbow, of course, is all the colorful fruits and vegetables available to you for consumption on a daily basis. The more you eat the rainbow, the more health you amass, the richer your life will be. 

You see, each of the colors of food provides your body with necessary vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients only that color can provide. White foods like onions, leeks, and garlic are part of the allium family and provide Allicin, a phytonutrient that inhibits the growth of cancer. Another example is the carotenoid family. The one you are most familiar with is probably beta-carotene from carrots. Actually, there are several phytonutrients in this family and different colored vegetables provide different carotenoids. 

Within each color, there is a range of foods that energetically speaks to your body. I’m not trying to get all metaphysical here. But if you think about each energy center, or chakra, and understand that as energy passes from one chakra to another it is as if that energy is rising through each point. Let’s see how that correlates with the foods in each color group. Take the color red, for example. There are beets that are grown in the ground, followed by strawberries grown close to the ground, followed by raspberries grown on bushes, tomatoes that grow higher and climb on a vine, and finally, cherries that grow in trees. There is a physical and energetic “rise” that occurs with each of these foods. The same pattern can be found in most of the color groups. 

Filling your plate with colorful foods is an expression of beauty and brings us joy. Seeing color makes us happy. Maybe this isn’t as potent a reason to eat fruits and vegetables as something more concrete like cancer-fighting nutrients, but it sure helps on days that are gray and gloomy, which are plentiful in Springtime with rain and possible snow depending on where you live. 

I’ve just given you three great reasons to eat the rainbow everyday. Increase your health wealth with rich-colored foods that provide numerous vitamins and minerals, confer energy, and bring you beauty and joy. Focus on eating a variety of different foods and colors so that you amass the most benefits. 

Bon apetit and luck of the Irish to ya!