Diet Diversity – Adding Variety for Vitality to your plate.

When it comes to your diet, don’t discriminate, a diverse plate matters! WHY?

When the intestinal ecology is altered, so too is the health of the host. The maintenance of a healthy microbiome is inseparable from your overall health. These microbes influence physiological function, local mucosal homeostasis, inflammation, and immunity.

So, Supporting a healthy microbiome is an important cornerstone for immune health and response to infections, as well as overall resilience. Many factors associated with modern lifestyles negatively impact your microbiome. These include medications, stress, toxins, overuse of antibacterial cleaning materials, processed foods and our sugary addiction.

The modern diet is depleted in fibre, gut bacteria’s natural food. So there’s every opportunity for the health-promoting, species naturally found in your microbiome to be wiped out and replaced by bacteria damaging to health.

For a truly resilient wellbeing, Ideally, you’ll have a diverse range of different species making up your microbiome, because a good variety of beneficial bacteria is synonymous with good health.

Get into the Diet diversity Challenge – Here are some tips and tricks to help mix it up;

• All plant-based foods count. With an emphasis on freshness when available.
• Quality matters. The idea is to emphasize the quality of plant-based foods rather than to focus on serving sizes.
• Look at your plate of food and observe the colours rather than analyzing the quantity.
• Get variety. Remember that many grains and legumes come in a variety of colours such as black or brown rice, green or red lentils, and red, black, or white beans.
• Try a new food every week and get creative. Instead of normal white cauliflower with dinner, introduce a colourful trio of cauli’s instead.
• Pre-Chop multicoloured veggies and freeze them for later.
• Ask for Substitutions when eating out.
• Pack wholesome snacks that hit a different colour category for your lunchbox or when travelling.
• Some foods help to cram in the colours, Soups, Salads and Smoothies will help you hit all the groups in one go!
• Garnishing your dish is an easy way to include a new group, sprinkle seeds, herbs or microgreens over your dish for texture and awesome variety
• An easy way to remember plant-based sources of B vitamins is to think, “greens and beans.” Try to incorporate leafy greens and legumes as rich sources of folate with lesser amounts of other B vitamins.

Try to aim for getting 5 of the ‘colour’ categories a day – What are they?