What Color is Your Food?

Allison J. Cleary

EatingWell interviews David Heber

Down the hall, the scent of freshly baked bread fills a research kitchen as scientists pull loaves from the oven for experiments on carbohydrate metabolism. In other labs, strawberries, avocados and cranberries are under scrutiny. Here at the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, founder David Heber, author of the popular What Color Is Your Diet?, directs research on the health attributes of foods. Recent discoveries include evidence that green tea might help to inhibit breast cancer, that substances in citrus fruits can repair damaged genetic material, and that any whole fruit or vegetable contains more powerful benefits than a single isolated compound.

Heber recently took time to talk candidly about his work and to muse about how findings from his lab move straight onto his own plate.

Q. What color is the diet of most North Americans?

Brown and beige with a lot of refined starches, sugars and fat. In America our problem is monotonous foods that have hidden fat and sugars that you can’t stop eating. You can’t eat just one: you keep eating and eating and eating.

One-third of Americans get 47 percent of their calories from junk food. These foods taste very good, so you tend to go to them when you’re stressed or haven’t planned out your meals. A basket of corn chips at a Mexican restaurant is 550 calories, two slices of pizza pack 1,000 calories. It adds up quickly. People forget what they ate yesterday, but it’s like a bank account: your body remembers.

Q. And you say fast foods tend to lack nutrients?

They lack healthful nutrients. The unhealthy diet has been associated with dental problems (gingivitis and inflammation of the gums), bone fractures and heart disease. Even in a person who remains thin, a high-fat, high-junk-food diet that raises cholesterol levels can lead to premature heart attacks. Finally, breast, colon and uterine cancers have all been associated with obesity, which creates an oxidant stress on the body.

Obesity doesn’t necessarily mean being big, by the way. It means a high fat ratio to your total weight. The obese person has more inflammatory burden in his or her body than a lean person, and inflammation is behind cancer and heart disease. So fruits and vegetables not only help by reducing the number of calories per bite, but the phytonutrients are also anti-inflammatory.

Q. How many fruits and vegetables does the typical American eat?

They eat three servings a day, and I like to joke that those are iceberg lettuce, French fries and ketchup. In fact, it’s not that far off because a quarter of the vegetables eaten in America are French fries.