Eating Yellow Aids in Digestion

There is nothing more cheerful than eating foods the color of sunshine. Full of sweetness, yellow produce tastes like it has been kissed by the sun. Some of the most therapeutic foods for building a healthy food foundation are yellow including lemons, pineapples, onions, and turmeric.

Lemons are packed full of vitamin C and can make the flavors in a dish pop to perfection. Lemons are full of 22 cancer preventing compounds and lemon oil is a natural anti-bacterial that can clean out the intestines. Although lemon juice is acidic, it alkalizes the body and should be enjoyed on a daily basis for detoxification. Lemons can be eaten skin and all, simply grate the skin into a sauce or dish for some lemon zest or throw half of a lemon through the juicer with your next vegetable juice.

A great way to boost your immune system is to include lemon slices in your water all day. You could focus on a morning tea and simply squeeze lemon into hot water. Drinking this tonic first thing in the morning will jump start your metabolism and start the natural process of detoxification in the liver.

My favorite lemon combo is with an avocado for instant guacamole. I love to flavor it with just a sprinkle of sea salt and cumin. Add the healthy fats of avocados to the vitamin C from lemons and guacamole becomes a very therapeutic food. Sneak one minced garlic clove and you have a heavy hitter for the immune system. Blend a spoonful of plain full fat yogurt and not only will your guacamole spread a little further (a good thing for an expensive dip), but you will be adding a natural probiotic. Isn't eating food as medicine fun?

My family loves to add guacamole to their organic corn tortillas, yet another yellow staple of America. Make sure to buy ORGANIC corn only as it is one of the most heavily GMO'ed crops in the US known to cause leaky gut and autoimmune diseases. Corn is one of the grains that needs to be soaked or fermented to be properly digested. If made from masa harina, in the traditional method, it is pre-soaked in lime or cal water and it is DELICIOUS and NUTRITIOUS

Another amazing fruit in the yellow spectrum is pineapple. Bromelain is a natural enzyme found in pineapple that can actually help you digest your food. This is a beautiful thing when acid blockers for indigestion are the highest selling class of drugs in America earning 9.5 Billion dollars in 2012.

Ditch the Acid Blockers

Unfortunately, we are barely getting out of the era of acid blockers. If, like me, you started to have major indigestion with the advent of GMO foods, you were probably prescribed some acid preventing meds for your acid reflux. I was pregnant twice in the last 10 years and lived off of TUMS. The advice to take a medication that prevented my body from creating the acid it needed to digest my food was the worst advice ever.

Holistic practitioners are healing people everyday from this bad advice. If we look at the anatomy of a stomach and GI tract, we see a thick gut lining dedicated to producing massive amounts of acid to break down food, cleave the vitamins and nutrients out of our food, and kill off germs, bacteria and viruses.

When the stomach has turned the food into a mashy pulp and begins to dump it into the small intestine it is practicing innate wisdom. However when we eat indigestible junk, or eat under stress, the stomach realizes that the food that is not properly broken down, will damage the intestine. The stomach then shoots the food back UP to try to protect the intestines delicate lining. We feel GERD or acid reflux, but instead of supporting the stomach with MORE acid to properly break down the food, we take acid preventers and allow the large food to dump into the intestine, bump into the lining, and create leaky gut.

Bromelain

Bromelain enzyme tablets could help break down some of that food; make sure to consult with a practitioner if that is right for your body. Eating a few slices of pineapple as a dessert with your meal could help break down food and so could simply slowing down and chewing your REAL FOOD in the first place.

Here is a list of yellow fruits and vegetables to add to your recipes this week.

Yellow Produce

• lemons
• bananas
• crookneck squash
• pineapple
• delicata squash
• star fruit
• mangoes
• endive
• yellow peppers
• onions
• chamomile
• yellow tomatoes
• yellow cauliflower
• yellow romanesco
• turmeric
• mustard seeds
• spaghetti squash
• crenshaw melon

Homemade Yellow Curry

Please share your favorites in the comments below. How do you incorporate these therapeutic sunshiny gems? My favorite is homemade yellow curry with yellow peppers, crookneck squash, turmeric, onions and a healthy fat fish.