Eating 5 Colors Everyday

A doctor once advised me on dieting: "Try to eat 5 colors per day", because more variety of food will give our body a better coverage of the different nutrients. Off hand I could not think of many varieties of food which are from different colors. But over time with the awareness of this "food of different colors" I realized that it is not that difficult. Below are some of the common and easily available healthy fruits and vegetables in each color:

• Green - kiwi, broccoli, asparagus, celery, honeydew, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, green bell pepper, green beans, green apples
  
• Orange - oranges, carrot, pumpkin, mangoes, sweet potatoes, peaches, apricots
  
• Red - red apples, papaya, watermelon, dragonfruit, tomatoes, pink guava, grapefruit (pink), strawberries, cherries, red cabbage, beetroot, red chili pepper/capsicum, red beans
  
• Yellow - banana, pineapple, lemon, starfruit, corn, yellow pepper/capsicum
  
• Purple/blue - grapes, eggplant / brinjal, blackberries, prunes, plums, some potatoes, purple cabbage, raisins, blueberries
  
• White - cauliflower, potatoes, onion, pear, garlic, mangosteens

I found a website which provides some detailed information on the nutrient values of the food at here. Let's try to have more colors in our food and eat healthy!

Grapefruit

Grapefruit is a highly acidic pink citrus fruit with high levels of vitamin C, potassium and antioxidant. It is a very healthy fruit and can help to prevent cancer. It also helps to lower cholesterol and helps the body to burn fat. As the taste is not so sweet with a little bit of bitterness some people may not like it.The texture is close to pomelo which is a famous product in Ipoh, Perak in Malaysia. Another close relative is sweetie. Below is a picture of grapefruit taken from Wikepedia.

I only got to know about grapefruit as an adult as it was not a common fruit in Asia. As it is a very healthy fruit, I try to consume it from time to time. In general, the size of a grapefruit is almost 1.5 times of an orange. As one whole grapefruit per time is too much for me to consume alone (as my family members do not particularly love this fruit) sometimes I will seize the opportunity to drink grapefruit juice which is sold in some restaurants and served during buffet breakfast in the hotels. Recently I found a great way to consume more of it by juicing it myself! By mixing with other fruits the taste is diluted and not as strong. My young children who cannot eat grapefruit directly can also enjoy the benefits of grapefruit by drinking the juice.

As I was writing this and searching for information online, I read that there was a survey conducted on 50,000 postmenopausal women in US which suggested that those who consumed 1/4 grapefruit everyday may increase the risk of breast cancer (this was mentioned in Wikepedia as well). This sounds scary and contradicts with many other studies which shows that it helps to prevent breast cancer. But as with all other things, I believe that moderation is the key. As there are so many different choices of fruits available, my current grapefruit intake is hardly even 1 per week on average. So I will still continue to enjoy grapefruit and its juice without worrying. May you enjoy grapefruit too!

Retinoblastoma

I wrote this health-related blog to increase the awareness of this disease, hopefully to help to save more lives... of young children. This entry was also posted in My Parenting Blog.


Early this year, I read about Retinoblastoma in the Reader's Digest magazine. It is a true story where two ladies became good friends over the Internet before they delivered their babies, and continued to share with each other their parenting experience. One day, one of them read about Retinoblastoma and recalled that she had seen the symptom in some pictures of her friend's baby - where the eye pupil appears white (or red). She quickly informed the friend and the child's life was saved. I thought it was quite a touching story.

Just a few weeks ago, a friend informed me that his toddler was diagnosed with Retinoblastoma at a late stage on one of her eyes and went for surgery to have her eye ball removed. I was very shocked and at the same time felt very sad. He was surprised that I knew what is Retinoblastoma as not many people are aware of this. If someone had observed the symptoms earlier on this little girl, it could have saved her from sacrificing one eye. This is why I decided to share information on this disease.

According to Wikipedia, Retinoblastoma happens about 1 in 15,000 children (rare, but it does happen to someone I know!), usually from 0-5 years old. Bilateral cases (both eyes are infected) are usually diagnosed within the first year, while unilateral cases (single eye is infected) at 2 years old. The symptoms of this disease include
- the pupil appears white (or red), similar to what we sometimes see in digital photos
- squint / crossed eyes
- deterioration of vision (very difficult to tell for young children)

90% of the patients have no family history of the disease. A patient may lose vision because the tumour develops in the cell of retina. Depending on the situation, surgery, laser treatment and common cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy may be needed. Although it is a very treatable cancer with one of the best cure rates (95-98%) of all childhood cancers, early detection is still the key as in all cancer diseases.

Tell someone today. You may save precious life.

First-time Juicing

I started juicing recently. I always see cancer patients start juicing when they are diagnosed with the disease. So I knew it must be beneficial although I did not look into the details of how and why. Until now, I never had the motivation to buy a juicer and start juicing myself due to busy schedule and thinking of the trouble to clean it after juicing. However, now that I received a juicer as a gift, there’s no reason I do not make good use of it!

Similar to fruits, juice is best consumed before meal and the best timing for me is probably early morning before breakfast. For me, knowing it is tough to do it on weekdays as I will be rushing to work, I start setting my target to juice once per week. Hopefully by getting used to it and practice it as a habit I can slowly increase the frequency. Juicing at night is another alternative if there is enough time gap between dinner and sleeping time. For people at home, juicing in between meals is of course another alternative.

The first question people commonly asked is, “Why is taking fruit juice better than taking the fruit directly?” The answer is because liquid is absorbed more easily by our stomach. Also, it is easier to consume juice than to eat fruits (comparing eating 2 apples and drinking a glass of apple juice). However, beware that there is a risk of over consuming fruit juice and thus taking in too much sugar. Also, by juicing we no longer take in the fiber (unless you eat the remaining after juicing).

I do not take juicing as a replacement of eating fruits, but an addition or a supplement to it. Thus, I choose to juice vegetables and fruits that I seldom consume directly. I started with carrot (it is rich in vitamins, and I do not eat it raw), mixing with a little tomato (it is also a healthy choice and I like it but seldom eat it) and some apples. I was told that green apple is more juicy compared to red ones – it also has less sugar. The juice really taste good and I am starting to get addicted to juicing :). I intend to add celery and beetroot as the next step, also due to their nutrient values. There is some work to clean up the juicer after juicing, but I guess this little effort is worth the benefits!

Introduction

I am in the high risk group of having cancer with a strong family history. This motivates me to live a healthier life to protect myself from this disease. With our current busy and hectic life, an environment where so much "junk food" is available for the sake of convenience, and so many temptations on the good taste of those "bad food", it is very difficult to live and eat in a healthy way. Nevertheless, it is still very important for us to remind ourselves that health, both physical and mental, is the most important thing in our life and it is our own responsibility to take care of our health.

Most of us have some old "bad habits" from young, wrong concept / knowledge about food and health, and it is very hard to "undo" them. Furthermore, there is too much information out there and even the medical professionals hold contradictory views on many occasions. We need to carefully filter all these information and make our own choice / decision. What I share here is filtered based on my knowledge and personal belief.

Above all, I try to live a healthy life style in a realistic and practical way. I believe in taking many small steps which accumulative achieve a giant step. For example, for a person who hardly exercises and wants to start exercising, I think it is practical to start once a week first instead of aggressively everyday. Although the latter may work for some people, I believe that for most of us it is easier to start taking baby steps first, instead of a drastic change. Most importantly, one must feel comfortable with the change and slowly incorporates the changes into a habit. As one gets used to it, one can slowly increase the density / frequency. As the saying goes, Rome was not built in one day!

Definitely my aim of this blog is to share and provide all health-related information and hope that you will benefit from it.

Your destiny is in your own hands!