Eating by Color

I bought a book off the remainder table a few weeks ago, Colorfully Slim. Each day you're supposed to only eat foods that are certain colors. Mondays are white food days, Tuesdays red food days, and so on. I bought it partly because I was charmed at the thought of sitting down to a meal where all the foods were orange or purple, and I was sold when I opened the book at random and saw a recipe for cold carrot soup. I love carrot soup.

Now, if I were going to plan a menu for all yellow foods, for instance (Saturdays), it would look something like this:

breakfast oatmeal with honey, scrambled eggs, mint tea with lemon
lunch lemon chicken, yellow squash, rice pilaf, lemonade
snack vanilla yogurt with pineapple (or just pineapple yogurt)
dinner cornmeal-fried trout or catfish, baked potato with butter, more yellow squash (because I love it), white wine, banana pudding for dessert

That assumes that I want to shop for all that stuff and have time to cook all day. But I'd say that's a good day's worth of yellow foods.

Unfortunately, the important word in Colorfully Slim is 'slim.' Their yellow day sample menu is this:

breakfast pineapple milkshake, small English muffin, coffee or tea
lunch 4 oz roast chicken with mustard and herbs, pineapple squash, 'add a beige' (which means you can have a slice of bread or a small portion of another carb), herb tea
snack banana with 1 Tbsp peanut butter
dinner lemon consomme, 4 oz baked fish, yellow and white vegetable casserole, bananas and pineapple, decaf coffee

Now, even assuming I could eat 4 oz of roast chicken in more than two or three bites, and even assuming I would not run amok after three days of these tiny portions (or the suggestion I put barf peanut butter on barf bananas) and bury my head in a bag of chips or just start eating butter by itself, there isn't enough yellow. Coffee? Coffee isn't yellow! Even I know that and I don't even like coffee. I guess you could add a whole lot of cream.

And let's talk cauliflower. I dislike cauliflower although I'll eat it. I would totally add it to my white day menu just to keep the theme. But in the book, cauliflower shows up on the white day sample menu and on the red day sample menu. Cauliflower is not red. The vegetable on red day should be beets, for those who can stand them (not me) or a salad made of red lettuce with tomatoes and red wine vinaigrette dressing, or red beans and rice. Excuse me while I slobber all over my keyboard.

If I had the money and time, I'd totally do my take on this diet--at least for one week. And really, considering my current (horrible) eating habits, having to stick to any kind of whimsical theme would be good for me--there's no brown day, so I'd have to cut chocolate, Cokes, and overcooked beef from my diet entirely. I'd have to eat a lot more vegetables than I currently do, especially on green day (Wednesday). But I would also totally not limit myself to 4 oz of chicken or fish, because seriously, are you crazy?

I like the book, though. I like the idea and the recipes look good, and there are even beauty treatments listed for each day that stick to the theme (cucumber facemask for green day, Vitamin C skin treatment for yellow day). Maybe one day I'll have an extra few hundred bucks and an entire week where I can do nothing but cook, and I can embark on a color day diet. If I do, I'll post pictures. Until then, unfortunately I will probably stay on my fast-food-eaten-in-the-car-on-the-way-to-and-from-work diet.