This document promotes eating a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables for optimal health and nutrition. It recommends filling half your plate with fruits and vegetables at lunch and dinner, including them at breakfast and as snacks. It notes that fruits and vegetables provide nutrients and health benefits without common side effects of pills, and they taste better. Colorful plates of fruits and vegetables are likened to a box of Crayola crayons for their rainbow of colors and nutrition.

1. Know how. Know now.
Color
Yourself
Healthy!

2. Alice Henneman, MS, RD, Extension Educator
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Extension in Lancaster County

3. For optimum
health, scientists
say eat a rainbow
of colors. Your
plate should look
like a box of
Crayolas
~Janice M. Horowitz,
TIME, January 12, 2002

4. This!

5. NOT This!

12. Eat an amount
of fruits and
veggies equal
to about half
your plate at
lunch and
dinner

13. Include a
fruit or
veggie at
breakfast

14. Enjoy
them as
snacks,
too!

15. “Let food
be thy
medicine…”
~ Hippocrates, 460 – 377 BC

16. Pills vs. food:
Ever see side effects like these
listed on a fruit or veggie?
• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Blurred vision
• Muscle cramps
• Headache
• Constipation
• Insomnia
• Breathing problems
• Tremors

17. And …
Fruits and
veggies
taste better
than pills!

18. Here are some colorful ideas …

27. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension,
Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources
© 2009