Adding red, white, and blue to your summer menu can be healthy, tasty, and colorful.
By Eve Victory
Everyone is gettin’ their grill on. Outdoor celebrations and get-togethers abound this summer. Beginning with Memorial Day through Labor Day, be proud of our red, white, and blue – and remember, those colors are particularly good for you too.
Adding color to your summer dishes is an incredibly healthy option. Reds like strawberries, red peppers, tomatoes, cherries, and pomegranates are chockful of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, manganese, and fiber, all of which contribute to a healthy heart and overall bolstering of our immune systems.
Anything blue is uber healthy! Blueberries, blackberries, elderberries, and plums are super high in anthocyanins, which is what gives them their color. These promote heart health, reduce your risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers.
With so much impact from our colorful ingredients, white is a very underrated color. Everyone thinks of bread, white sugar, white potatoes, and whole milk, which in quantity are certainly not good for us. However, there are tons of incredibly nutritious white foods that we ignore. Beans like cannellini and black-eyed peas, Greek yogurt, egg whites, cashews, pine nuts, and cheeses are all necessary sources of healthy protein. White vegetables that are often forgotten as powerhouses of nutrition like cauliflower, onions, garlic, turnips, parsnips, and mushrooms.
Be patriotic this summer and shop at the grocery for your colors. Wear and eat your red, white, and blue with pride.
A native New Yorker, Eve Victory has called Hot Springs home since 2003. Working for years as an event and tradeshow planner and personal chef, Eve is currently the Hospitality and Tourism Instructor at National Park College. For information on how to turn your education into a career in the second largest industry in Hot Springs, contact Eve at evictory@np.edu.
