05 - Eat the Rainbow! The Power Behind a Colorful Plate

In this episode, we're diving into the incredible benefits of fruits and vegetables, myth-busting the idea that eating healthy is always expensive, and exploring the essential role of minerals in our bodies.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why produce is essential for overall health and how each color supports different body functions
•  The truth about organic vs. non-organic produce (spoiler: you don’t have to buy everything organic!)
•  The Dirty Dozen list—fruits and veggies that are best to buy organic
•  Adding more nutrient-dense foods (rather than focusing on elimination) could be the key to feeling better.

Save This! I’ve included the 2024 Dirty Dozen list—screenshot it for your next grocery trip & be sure to buy these organically!

Strawberries

Spinach

Kale, collard, and mustard greens

Grapes

Peaches

Pears

Nectarines

Apples

Bell and hot peppers

Cherries

Blueberries

Green beans

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Resources Mentioned:

• Environmental Working Group Dirty Dozen List

Connect with Courtney: 

Instagram: @nourished_living_

Work With Me: Nourished Living

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the nourished living podcast, where I will be diving deep into nutrition, holistic wellness, and practical tips to help you live your healthiest, most vibrant life. I'm Courtney Podany, a nutritional therapist, certified personal trainer. Type 1 diabetic and mom. And I'm here to help you take charge of your health with ease and confidence. Together, we'll explore how to nourish your body, mind, and soul in a way that feels good and sustainable. So, grab your favorite beverage, take a deep breath, and let's get into the episode. Hi guys. Welcome back to the Nourished Living Podcast. This is episode five and I apologize if I sound any different. I was sick earlier this week. Actually. Everyone in my house got sick, but I'm feeling like 80% better. Like I'm doing very well today compared to what was going on earlier, but I can't tell if I sound a little nasally. If you notice a difference, it's just because I was sick earlier, but I'm doing well now. This episode is going to be dedicated to produce the power of produce plus the magic of minerals. I couldn't decide which of those phrases I liked better. So we did both. Today we are going to examine why produce fruits and vegetables are so wonderful for our bodies. We will myth bust, why you do not need to buy all of your produce organically, and we will look at the various functions amongst each color of produce so you can identify if there's a color you might need to add into your diet. But real quick, I want to share a personal story. So I have three kids, a four and a half year old daughter, and two and a half year old twin boys. And my daughter has always been a great eater. She has basically eaten anything I've ever put in front of her from beets to cauliflower. But my boys, they have always been a completely different story. However, one of the things that they all three agreed on was eggs, which I was actually like totally surprised by this fact because I feel like people either love eggs or hate eggs, and with how picky my boys had been up until that point, I just assumed eggs were gonna be something they did not like. So I never wanted to like really push eggs heavily on them. They were definitely a breakfast staple in our house, but it wasn't the only thing I had in rotation. But then all of a sudden, like a month ago, all three kids. Literally on the same day just stopped eating eggs. And since my boys are picky besides eggs, I've had a hard time finding another protein for them to eat in the morning. And I know there are lots of options, we needed something they would actually eat. So I've been quite sad that they haven't wanted eggs anymore. So I was thinking. Maybe I just need to spread it out even more than what I was doing. And so we took like a two week break and I tried it again. I was like, man, hopefully I'm not just gonna be throwing these eggs away. And they ate them. I was so excited. This felt like a huge win for me. If you also deal with picky eaters, I totally get it. And even as a nutritionist, the boys just sometimes throw me for a loop because it seems like they only want to eat five foods, and I want to provide variety. I don't like to eat the same things all the time, but they're just their own creatures. If this is you and you have picky eaters, just know that you are not alone. I also deal with it as well. Okay, so that was my fun story for the day. Okay, so we like fruits and vegetables because they are nutrient dense and they provide huge amounts of minerals for us. What are minerals you ask? Great question. Minerals are what remains when an animal or plant tissue is burned in the form of ash. So slightly morbid for a second, but it's a nice full circle moment. The minerals start from the earth. We eat them in the form of food, and then when we perish on, they return back to the earth. And what's really important here is that we cannot produce minerals within our body, so we need to obtain them from the foods that we eat or supplements. I definitely believe a well-rounded diet is necessary for good health, but if there's any area where you know you are lacking supplements will help you to fill that gap. For example, I don't eat fish as often as I should, so I supplement with fish oil, but of course, please consult with your doctor before starting anything new. Some of the various functions that minerals are involved with our bodies are helping with enzyme reactions. They help maintain the pH of our body. They assist with transfer across cell membranes, meaning they help to get, water or oxygen or whatever we need into our cells. They contract and relax our muscles and they are involved in tissue growth and minerals are mostly located within our skeletal system, so they also assist with functional and structural support of our bodies. There are two classifications of minerals, macro minerals, and micro minerals, or you might have also heard of them as trace minerals. The macro minerals consist of calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sulfur, sodium, and chloride, and they are referred to as macro because we need them in a larger amount than the micro minerals. Micro minerals consist of boron, chromium, germanium, iodine, iron, lithium, manganese, molybdenum, rubidium, selenium, silicone, vanadium, and zinc. And our bodies do not require quite as much of these and minerals are easily depleted by refined sugar dairy. Excess coffee and alcohol. And so why we're talking about produce fruits and vegetables is because this is the easiest way to obtain minerals through our diet. So again, I'm sure you are tired of hearing about this by now, but it is another reason why I say that we should be shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store so we can get lots of produce for our. Daily nutrition, and I would like to myth bust for a second. So I hear this all the time from people they think that eating healthy is so expensive or they don't like to buy organically because it's expensive. Well, I would like to let you know that we actually do not need to buy all produce organically. There is what is known as the dirty Dozen, and these produce are the most heavily doused in pesticides. So these are the ones that need to be purchased organically, and it's tested each year. So there's an updated list that I'm going to provide for you, but other than these 12 produce items you can buy non-organically. So it doesn't have to break the bank and strawberries seem to be on the list from year to year, but there is some variation, so you can check on that each year. And when you buy organically, you are not, completely eliminating all of the pesticides, but it will have the least amount of pesticide residue, which is definitely what we're aiming for. The goal is to eliminate exposure to additives, preservatives, hormones, toxic pesticides, and fertilizers. These are very burdensome on our bodies and can build up over time, and it's the environmental working group that tests. These foods each year. So I'm going to read to you the 2024 Environmental Working Group Dirty Dozen list because the 2025 list has not come out yet. If I remember correctly, it was released in April of last year. So it should be coming out any time now. And I'm also going to link the EWG website for you. But, the 2024 Dirty Dozen consists of strawberries, spinach, kale, and collard greens, grapes, peaches, pears, nectarines, apples, bell and hot peppers, cherries, blueberries, and green beans. If you are buying produce that is not on this list, you can absolutely purchase it non-organically and it will not have a huge amount of pesticides on them. Of course, we should always wash our produce before we eat it as well. That helps to eliminate if there's anything on it. I have heard a statistic that from when the time. From the food is picked to when it arrives to your home it could have been touched by up to 30 people. So again, just a good idea to wash your produce before you eat it. And I've mentioned how each different color of produce provides different nutrients for our bodies. So we are going to look at all of the beautiful colors and their functions. My personal goal is to have at least three different colors of produce each day, but to incorporate every single color at some point throughout the week. A very common theme I see amongst people's food journals when I look over them is that they're not eating enough fruits or vegetables. It's quite common. The recommendation for adults is to have at least five servings of fruits and vegetables each day. And especially if we think about the standard American diet, also known as the sad diet that is primarily processed foods. So it is very common for people not to get the five servings of fruits and vegetables each day. Another common theme I see is when people start considering that they need to make a change and they have this new health goal that they wanna work on. They think that elimination or restriction is the answer, but maybe we actually need to add more in more fruits, more vegetables, more nutrient-dense food. Wouldn't it be great if just adding more food was the answer? It totally could be, especially if you feel like you have been struggling in a certain area of your health and haven't been able to pinpoint how to improve it or start feeling better. Maybe this episode will bring to light a color of produce that you need to add into your diet. That is going to support you through that. So again, the colors that we're talking about are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and black. So red produce like apples, tomatoes, bell peppers. These are going to help with heart health. If you think about our circulatory system or our cardiovascular system, it's usually depicted in red like our blood, our heart, our blood vessels, which is a nice way to remember that. Red helps with heart health and potentially lowering blood pressure. But it also aids with digestion as well. Orange, so like oranges or sweet potatoes helps with digestion. Mucus membrane and cell health and assisting our immune system. Yellow like bananas or squash are good for immunity and it promotes increased brain function. Green like apples or broccoli are best for detoxification and liver function. And one of the many jobs that the liver has, there's over 400 jobs, is to detox. So those two kind of go hand in hand. Blue and purple. Foods help with blood sugar, regulation, memory, function, and circulation. So blue would be like blueberries and purple would be like grapes or eggplant. White foods like cauliflower, onions, or garlic, help with blood sugar regulation, blood pressure, detoxification, new cell growth and circulation. And black foods like black berries help with detoxification and cholesterol levels. So maybe there was something that stuck out to you there. I would definitely nurture that and try to incorporate more of that color into your diet. Or let's say for example, that you struggle with high cholesterol. I would make sure that you are including black produce very regularly. So the key takeaways here are that each and every color of our produce are very beneficial and necessary to maintaining well-rounded health. I challenge you to begin incorporating as many colors as you possibly can. I know sometimes we can get on autopilot with the foods that we eat, the foods that we buy from the grocery store and the meals that we cook. I'm totally guilty of this too. But if this is you, I challenge you to look up different recipes that call for produce that you don't typically eat. To begin mixing it up a little bit. See if you start feeling better. And I included a list of the dirty dozen produce in the show notes. So you can take a screenshot of that and have it with you every time you grocery shop to make sure that you buy the dirty dozen organically. Otherwise, you can buy the rest of your produce non-organically. Okay. I hope this was helpful. As always, thank you for hanging out with me today, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for hanging out with me today and tuning in to the Nourished Living Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found something you can start implementing right away to kickstart your nourished transformation. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from these insights. You can also connect with me over on Instagram at nourished underscore living underscore for more resources and support. Until next time, stay nourished.