I. Skim the text and classify the products according to their colour. Pay attention to the words in bold

" The Colour of Nutrition: Fruits and Vegetables"

Colorize your diet. That is the latest advice from nutrition experts who have studied the health-promoting properties of the vast spectrum of colourful fruits and vegetables now available throughout the country.

Two recently published books – "What Colour Is Your Diet?" by Dr. David Heber, director of the Centre for Human Nutrition at the University of California at Los Angeles, with Susan Bowerman, a dietitian, and "The Colour Code" by Dr. James A. Joseph, Dr. Daniel A. Nadeau and Anne Underwood – emphasize the importance of increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables, and the need to choose broadly among the richly coloured options.

This is not hard to do, and the payoff in terms of health – and weight – can be considerable. Nearly all fruits and vegetables are naturally very low in fat, replete with filling fibre and loaded with natural chemicals that can help protect against heart disease, cancer and age-related cognitive decline, cataracts and muscular degeneration.

"What Colour Is Your Diet?" also provides tempting recipes to encourage an increased intake of produce, which should add up to 9 or 10 servings a day. No doubt you know about health experts' "five-a-day" campaign, currently achieved by at most a third of the population. But five servings a day of fruits and vegetables is the bare minimum recommended to achieve a wholesome diet; nine servings or more are optimal for health maintenance.

But merely counting servings may not even be adequate if, these experts now say, you are missing out on one or more major colour categories.

"Not all members of the fruit and vegetable group are alike," Dr. Heber says. "They have unique properties that provide combinations of substances with unique effects on human biology. Therefore, simply eating five servings a day of fruits and vegetables will not guarantee that you are eating enough of the different substances needed to stimulate the metabolic pathways of genes in the different organs where fruits and vegetables have their beneficial effects."

"Pigment power" is what it is all about, say the authors of "The Colour Code," who divide fruits and vegetables into four broad colour groups: red, orange-yellow, green and blue-purple, each with a different set of beneficial phytonutrients. Dr. Heber, who is more of a "splitter," groups them into seven colour categories, as follows:

· Pink grapefruit and watermelon, which are rich in the carotenoid lycopene, a potent hunter of gene-damaging free radicals that seems to protect against prostate cancer as well as heart and lung disease.

· Red/purple, including red and blue grapes, blueberries, strawberries, beets, eggplant, red cabbage, red peppers, plums and red apples, which are loaded with powerful antioxidants called anthocyanins believed to delay cellular aging and help the heart by blocking the formation of blood clots. Dr. Heber includes red wine in this category.

· Orange, including carrots, mangoes, cantaloupe, winter squash and sweet potatoes, rich in the cancer-fighter alpha carotene, along with beta carotene that protects the skin against free-radical damage and promotes repair of damaged DNA.

· Orange/yellow, including oranges, peaches, papaya and nectarines, which provide beta cryptothanxin, which supports intracellular communication and may help prevent heart disease.

· Yellow/green, including spinach, collards, corn, green peas, avocado and honeydew, which are sources of the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin. These are strongly linked to a reduced risk of cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of preventable blindness in developed countries.

· Green, including broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale. These are rich in cancer-blocking chemicals like sulforaphane, isocyanate and indoles, which inhibit the action of carcinogens.

· White/green, including garlic, onions, leeks, celery, asparagus, pears and green grapes. The onion family contains allicin, which has antitumor properties. Dr. Heber includes white wine in this category. Try to avoid peeling foods like apples, peaches and eggplant lest you lose their most concentrated source of beneficial chemicals.

Notes:

spectrum – спектр, диапазон,

replete – насыщенный,

cognitive decline – снижение умственных способностей,

muscular degeneration – ослабление мышечной активности,

metabolic pathway – метаболический путь,

phytonutrients – питательные вещества растительного происхождения,

beneficial effect – благоприятное воздействие,

splitter – 1) ученый, занимающийся классификацией организмов на группы, формируемые на основании второстепенных характерных особенностей, 2) отщепенец.