Are You Eating the Rainbow? Here Is Why You Should!

Happy National Vegetarian Week!

In this week’s blog, we are going to be discussing the potential benefits of adopting a more plant-based/vegetarian diet and sharing some foods to help support your health and bone growth.

Personally, I have followed a plant-based diet for the last 3 years. I found it helped to clear my skin from acne by reducing dairy intake and animal products and I really have learnt to enjoy this way of eating. At first, it can seem a little daunting, especially if you are used to eating meat with most meals.

Thankfully the alternatives and wealth of recipes available now have made vegetarian food more accessible and tastier.  There are a lot of meat alternatives also, but I personally try to avoid those as they can be still highly processed. I prefer to go for things such as a three-bean chilli or chickpea and vegetable curry where I can.

A vegetarian diet typically involves a lot of vegetables, what is great about this is the more vegetables we have the more variation of colour we are likely to eat. It is the colour in our vegetables that contain what are called phytonutrients and antioxidants. Both of which are great for preventing disease and promoting health and longevity. So, by eating a variety of colours in our plant-based diet, we can have maximum benefit.

If you are healing from an injury, it is great to make sure you are getting plenty of red colours as these vegetables contain brilliant anti-inflammatory properties.

Vegetables play a huge role in our diet to provide vital vitamins and nutrients too. Calcium helps to keep the bones healthy and Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium.
Vitamin D is also essential for every repair process in the body, as well and improving bone density.

It’s difficult for us to get sufficient Vitamin D from our diet, especially with British weather. That is where supplements are extremely helpful to ensure we are getting all the nutrients we need. In the centre we stock Vitamin D3 with K2, if you would like any more information on supplements, please let us know! Some food that helps to support our bone growth and are high in calcium are leafy greens, broccoli, cabbage, nuts, soya beans, tofu.

I have linked one of my favourite chilli recipes below, if you would like to try a different meal this week, let us know if you do!

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/vegan-chilli

Curries and spices are brilliant for making vegetarian meals more exciting, this comes with some unexpected benefits. Spices have been shown to help us with so many health conditions from blood pressure to inflammation and skin health. Be sure to use a variety of spices in your cooking.

So, ideally try and get as many different colours and spices as possible on your plate that you can, for the rest of this week maybe try to be conscious of adding some extra veg into your diet or perhaps trying a different kind you haven’t tried before. Eat the rainbow!

With Love,
Sara