At SoSensational, we love this new cookbook, Rainbow Recipes based on the well-researched Rainbow Diet – not just because it appeals to both our appetite (all those, literally, mouth-watering dishes) and our sense of aesthetics (all those gorgeous colours), but also because some of the research on which the nutritional information is based, came from women aged between 50 and 70 – who are very important to us at SoSensational.
This research showed that those who adhered most closely to the Rainbow Diet were, by the end of the 15-year research period, completely free of 11 chronic illnesses and 40 per cent more likely to live past 70.
Rainbow Recipes is a collaboration between Chris Woollams, a former Oxford University biochemist, and Barbara Cox, a respected nutritionist and author, who became passionate about the importance of eating healthily after a nine-year stay in Japan, a country renowned for its low levels of obesity, cancer and heart disease.
After returning to the UK, Ms Cox began her mission to devise meals that would incorporate the benefits of a Japanese diet, but would also appeal to Western tastes. Dr Woollams, who left Oxford University to become chairman of an ad agency, began his own healthy-eating crusade after his daughter, Catherine, then 24, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. Father and daughter were constantly seeking out new information from around the world that could help her. And, naturally, a major part of their quest concerned diet and nutrition.
Dr Woollams, by this time much in demand as a speaker, started using the phrase “Eat a Rainbow Diet,” after looking at early research from Harvard Medical School about the benefits of a “colourful Mediterranean diet.”
At the time, health authorities were, notes Dr Woollams, “obsessed by the benefits of eating a low fat and high carbohydrate diet for good health”, but Woollams and Cox believe that “low fat /high carbs” is “the myth lying at the heart of a Western epidemic of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and dementia.” Instead they preach that a good diet can not only “protect” you but a diet rich in phyto-nutrients (plant nutrients such as carotenoids, anthocyanins, sulforaphanes, indole 3 carbinol, curcuminoids, resveratrol, egcg, omega 3, silibinin, citrus pectins, lycopene and many more) can “correct” you too.
And, of course, all of these phyto-nutrients are incorporated into this collection of delicious, health-giving dishes in Rainbow Recipes. Recipes cover soups, main dishes (light lunches as well as suppers and dinners), starters, puddings and breakfast dishes, all beautifully photographed to be super-tempting.
As well as the recipes, the authors have also evolved 10 rules for healthy eating, which are:
1.No refined foods (that’s white flour, white sugar, white rice, etc) or added glucose.
2. Consume “good fats” (that’s extra virgin olive oil and walnut oil), and nuts and seeds daily.
3. Eat fish at least twice a week.
4. Eat little or no red meat, but instead consume organic chicken or game.
5. Eat a wide variety of colourful fresh vegetables.
6. Eat some colourful fresh fruits but far less in quantity than vegetables.
7. Eat herbs and spices, and consume infusions – teas like green tea.
8. Drink moderate amounts of red wine (one glass per day for women, two for men).
9. Limit cows’ dairy, replacing it with a little goats’ and ewes’ dairy.
10. Drink a plentiful supply of mineral water.
You can stay up to date with their latest nutritional research at The Rainbow Diet or via Eat a Rainbow.
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