A Plate of Many Colors In an earlier post, we introduced the Plate of Many Colors, a concept to help guide you in making smart, healthy nutrition choices. The point is to move away from BROWN—the color of fried foods and other fast-food fare—and open your eyes, your mind, and your mouth to a more colorful array of foods including RED foods. As promised, we’re continuing our series on colorful nutrition with today’s post all about foods that are RED. (To read our post about GREEN foods that are good for you, click here.) Why RED is Right-On RED is the color of blood and the heart; it represents passion, vitality, and health, the forces that keep us going strong. It should come as no surprise, then, that red foods are extremely beneficial for our bodies. Like most plants, red fruits and vegetables are rich sources of vital nutrients called antioxidants that promote healthy cell function and help protect our bodies against external and internal threats. These antioxidants come from various kinds of phytochemicals, chemicals specific to plants that serve helpful functions like regulating cell growth and attracting pollinating insects. In the human body, scientists believe that antioxidants fight and even help prevent certain types of cancer by keeping cancerous cells from growing and multiplying. RED Foods Round-Up Research on antioxidants is still in the early stages, and most studies have shown that supplements of antioxidants like vitamin C and beta carotene don’t actually confer any health benefits. The only real way to reap the rewards of antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals is to make fruits and vegetables a regular part of your diet. With that in mind, here is our round-up of righteous RED foods whose benefits are currently backed by research: Red onions are among the foods most densely packed with beneficial phytochemicals, including quercetin, which helps lower blood pressure and cholesterol in humans. Eating onions on a weekly basis has been shown to reduce the risk of colorectal, laryngeal, and ovarian cancers, and ½ cup of onion a day may reduce the risk of oral and esophageal cancers in particular. Radishes contain sulfuric compounds called glucosinolates, which have been shown to inhibit the development and progression of prostate, bladder, colon, liver, breast, and ovarian cancers. Tomatoes are very high in lycopene, an antioxidant that gives red...