Yellow colored fruits and vegetables might be my personal favorite because they carry many helpful compounds to help enhance digestion. Many of them are also enzyme rich – meaning they are catalysts to help promote proper digestion and the processing of the food we eat.
Examples of yellow foods include bananas, yellow bell pepper, ginger, lemon, golden beets, chamomile flowers, chickpeas, yellow potatoes, pineapples, plantains, quinoa and many others!
Nutritional Uses:
- Ginger contains over 400 different compounds that can aid in nausea & gastric emptying
- Many foods in the citrus category are associated with reduce risk of upper GI cancers
- Pineapple contains bromelain which helps us break down protein- if you’ve ever noticed a funny feeling in your mouth when eating it – that’s evidence of the powerful impact of this enzyme at work
- Bananas that are unripe (slightly green at top) contain higher amounts of resistant starches which “resist” digestion and help feed up our gut microbes
Plant Compounds in Yellow Foods: Bromelain, Gingerol, Lutein, Rutin, Zeaxanthin
Try it out: The Yellow Smoothie
I like pairing banana, pineapple, and a small amount of ginger in a smoothie if you are in a smoothie mood!
Try it out: Crunchy chickpeas
My all time favorite snack in the yellow category is crunchy chickpeas. You can add some yellow bell peppers on the side for an extra dose of yellow. You can check out the recipe HERE.
Resources:
Altınbaş A, Ekiz F, Başar Ö, Kılınçalp S, Yılmaz B, …, Yüksel O. Drinking pineapple juice for undigested food in stomach. Turk J Gastroenterol. 2014 Apr;25(2):220-1. doi: 10.5152/tjg.2014.4012.
Bae J-M, Kim EH. Dietary intakes of citrus fruit and risk of gastric cancer incidence: An adaptive meta-analysis of cohort studies. Epidemiology and Health. 2016;38:e2016034. doi:10.4178/epih.e2016034.
Nikkhah Bodagh M, Maleki I, Hekmatdoost A. Ginger in gastrointestinal disorders: A systematic review of clinical trials. Food Sci Nutr. 2018;7(1):96–108. Published 2018 Nov 5. doi:10.1002/fsn3.807.