Eat Your Colors

Book excerpt: The ancient wisdom of Ayurvedic medicine meets up-to-the-minute nutritional science in a clever, colorful guide to matching diet and body type. Marcia Zimmerman takes the mystery and complexity out of healthy eating and makes it simple. Eat Your Colors is a health and nutrition guide based on the idea that everyone fits into one of three body types. Identifying each type by a simple color -- red, yellow, or green -- Zimmerman provides a questionnaire to help readers determine their primary and complementary colors and explains which foods are best for which color types. For example, reds do very well on a vegetarian diet, yellows need some animal protein to feel their best, and greens will reap benefits from pungent foods and strong spices. Eat Your Colors is filled with information on such news-making topics as phytoestrogens, which can reduce the risk of breast and prostate cancer; lutein and zeaxonthin, which protect the eyes of computer users and prevent the common eye disorder macular degeneration; and anthocyanidins, which reduce inflammation in cases of chronic disease. And it offers practical, easy-to-follow advice on: --creating meal plans using the optimal foods for each color--using herbs, spices, sauces, and condiments to balance off-colors--discovering color weaknesses and combating them by eating the right foods Offering a unique way of thinking about diet, Eat Your Colors will do for body type what Eat Right for Your Type did for blood type.