Purple food

Catalyst, the other day, had an item on the benefits of purple food as far as aging was concerned. It seems the people who live on Okinawa Island in Japan live to very old age - lots of centenarians and scientists now think it is down to them eating lots of purple sweet potatoes. So cut to various experts who said it was basically all purple food. I see the photo on this page highlights eggplants, but I suspect these don’t really count because they are not purple inside. Same goes for grapes. I think you really have to have the bulk of the food being purple

PURPLE MAKES YOU LIVE LONGER THEY SAY

“Acai - Delicious, nutritious and totally exotic this Superfruit may be the perfect life partner. Not only is the taste mouthwatering, but the health benefits are endless” Purple? foods

There’s always some kind of food fad around - grapefruit, blueberries, bananas, even eggs have all had their turn I think. Then there’s all the diet stuff - well the 5/2 diet is working for me and I guess that is a fad. But purple to stop you dying? Really? I do tend to regard all these things with a bit of cynicism. And there is always someone ready to jump on the bandwagon. The quote at above is just one example of people exploiting a bit of genuine research. Acai? They look like blueberries in the photo on their web page. You can buy the actual fruit, a sorbet (organic of course), smoothie pouches and pure acai juice. It all seems to be priceless, so is most likely pretty expensive. But I’m unkind - maybe they actually believe their blurb.

red-cabbage

purple-vegetables

purple-sweet-potatoes

But back to purple food. Apparently they contain anthocyanins which are potent phytochemicals. Definition of phytochemical - “an active biological compound found in plants” - well that doesn’t tell you much does it?

“Anthocyanins protect against cardiovascular disease, improve mental clarity, neutralize oxidative stress, and even help prevent cancer.” Underground health reporter

Oxidative damage is caused by scavenging free radicals! Free radicals are “uncharged molecules (typically highly reactive and short-lived) having an unpaired valency electron.”

I can obviously go on and on with these definitions because I don’t understand the jargon at all. Suffice to say purple = wonderfood

And another thing - doesn’t anthocyanins imply cyanide? Isn’t that a poison?

I found this wonderful (in the sense that it is so over the top) website called Underground Health Reporter that raved on and on about the benefits of purple food. And I have to say that on this Catalyst program there were some pretty authentic scientists confirming the claims. If you read the Undergraound Health Reporter article - and no doubt countless others - you just get the message that purple is good. And I think from Catalyst I got that the fruit had more than the vegetables, but that one tended to eat more of the vegetables.

And purple also seems to merge into red and blue - fair enough I guess.

It doesn’t look too good though, does it? Purple food I mean. Jane Grigson calls beetroot (almost purple) a bossy vegetable because of the way it colours everything it touches and because it’s flavour is so strong. And there’s lots of trendy things like purple carrots and purple cauliflower out there now. The purple cauliflower in particular really doesn’t look right - or natural even. It looks dyed.

And anyway should we be trying to live longer? I guess we all want to. I doubt that anyone really wants to die (well very unhappy people do) - I don’t want to die because I want to know what happens to the world and to my lovely children and grandchildren, and also because I don’t want to suffer pain. But if I’m honest we really shouldn’t be trying to prolong life - there are too many people in the world already and we oldies cost more to maintain.

Anyway David seems keen - on purple food I mean. So perhaps I’ll buy some red cabbage and red onions next time we go to the market. We’ve got beetroot already.

Purple foods include:

Fruit: Blueberries, blackberries, blackcurrants (if only we could get them here!), black grapes, pomegranates, plums, elderberries, figs, bilberries, acai, gogi berries (what are they for heaven’s sake?)

Vegetables: red cabbage, purple sweet potato, beetroot, red onions, eggplant (not really purple), purple cauliflower, purple carrots, purple asparagus (really?), radicchio