Today we’re going to play the marooned-on-a-desert island game, only instead of deciding which movies or books or members of the opposite sex we wish to be stuck with for the rest of our lives, we’re going to pick one fruit or vegetable from each stripe of the "nutrition rainbow."
This isn't as hard as it sounds, because the latest iterations of this concept -- popularized by David Heber in his 2002 book, "What Color is Your Diet?" -- break the rainbow down into so many prism gradations that you don't have to do all that much excluding. You could take both broccoli and spinach, for instance, because spinach is a green-stripe veggie, whereas broccoli falls under the "green-white" stripe, whatever that means. Nor do you have to pick between tomatoes and strawberries, since tomato is a "red" and strawberry falls under "red-purple." (I think these gradations have something to do with what you're trying to promote -- whether you're pushing cancer prevention or memory enhancement, for instance.)
While it would be interesting to see what would happen to Morgan Spurlock (of "SuperSize Me" fame) if he ate nothing but rainbow foods for a month, our purpose here is frugality. Choosing one food from each stripe and then educating yourself about that food -- both in terms of pricing and all the different things you can do with it -- could be an interesting way to economically enhance your family's nutrition.
Take the orange stripe. Carrots, sweet potatoes and pumpkins all contain decent amounts of vitamin C and beta carotene. But carrots are cheaper, and unlike the other two, can be eaten raw as well as cooked. Not only that, but the carrot can also do a decent impersonation of its orange buddies in baked goods like pie, bread, cake and even cookies.
So, much as I love pumpkin bread, I'd pack carrots on my trip to Gilligan's Island. And that's what I keep in the fridge. I'll buy sweet potatoes or pumpkin, but only when the price is right.
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