Poll Incoming!
For most of your life, about how many colors of food have you eaten regularly?
Vegetables (0-8):
white, brown, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red
Fruits (0-7):
brown, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red
Proteins (0-5):
white, red, orange, brown, green
I don’t understand what you mean by ‘Proteins’. Is that simply any meat?
Does the color refer to the interior flesh, or the outside before you bite into it? I presume you don’t mean the color while “on the hoof”(or wing or fin)? I’m thinking delicious fried chicken that’s brown outside but white, grayish, or pinkish inside. Or perhaps a shrimp that is orange with the shell on, pink if shelled, and white inside. Same goes for fruit and veggies - with the skin or not? Raw or cooked?
It would include meats (cow, pig, fish, shellfish, etc.) and some vegetarian options (peas, quinoa, tofu, etc.).
Outside for vegetables and fruits.
Inside for proteins.
Raw.
Explain this better. This is meaningless.
Somewhat, yes. Dietician types have recommended “rainbowness in the diet” as an indicator of healthful living, so you can find articles talking about how it is good to eat a rainbow of colors, generally accompanied with a picture like this:
That sort of presentation is unscientific but, at the same time, most people are not scientific and have no idea what a quinoa is or that there’s some sort of debate over whether a cucumber is a fruit or a vegetable. The theory is that for lay-people, “eat the rainbow” is sufficiently evocative of a phrase that everyone will get what you mean, even if it is a pretty vague statement if you feel like being technical about the matter.
And part of the question I hoped to resolve was whether people could properly parse and answer the question on its own without a whole bunch of examples and answers to minutiae. If the basic question is too long and detailed, then no one will answer.
But, likewise, if you ask people how many milligrams of each type of phytochemical they are intaking on average, which is what we are actually curious about, then you’ll get zero answers since no one knows how to determine the answer to that question - even though it is very precise and meaningful.
Results even if accurate may not mean what they look like.
I’m pretty high on the colors on all groups, at least if I’m understanding what you mean (what’s an orange protein? I can’t think of any offhand. Maybe some lentils are orange?). And I’m diabetic – recently diagnosed, in my late 60’s. My father was also diabetic – starting 20 or more years earlier in his life. Did my overall diet help bring on my diabetes? Or did it delay it for 20 years? How do you tell? (And, for that matter, for most of the first 20 years of my life and most of the middle of his we were eating pretty close to the same diet.)
I didn’t used to have diabetes, then I had diabetes, and my diet in regard to number of colors is not different. I’m not sure how you’d like me to answer.
Salmon - it’s one of my most frequently eaten proteins.
That you currently are diabetic and whatever you would view as being most representative of your average diet over your life.
Ah. I don’t think of salmon as orange; I think of salmon as pink or red. I eat a fair amount of it; usually in a version which says “pink” on the can.
I expect that’s going to be another complication in the poll – people thinking of the same food as being different colors.
Thanks for the explanations.
I easily maxed out in every category, and I can’t wrap my head around how it’s possible to eat only one or two colors of things - though obviously the poll shows otherwise. I don’t have diabetes, but for full disclosure: I was told I was ‘borderline’ diabetic(and my father was diabetic) about five years ago, but within two years my doctor said I was well within normal range. I did that by stopping my binge tendencies(full pot of mashed potatoes anyone?) and lost weight, but my overall diet hasn’t changed in my adult life.
Since we’re counting the outside colors of fruit - you can up your color count easily just with a mango. The one in the fruit bowl on my dining room table currently has four colors. A rainbow all by itself 
A variety of sea foods are orange or orange-related. Uni and tobiko are both hard orange. Some fish meat has an orangeish hue to it. And some people might consider things like lobster and shrimp to be orange since their meat has an orange layer around the outside.
Eating fish is, supposedly, correlated to a lack of diabetes. If someone thinks of some orange protein, they probably eat seafood.
I do not have diabetes. I eat just about anything so, all colors.
Anecdotal point I eat fish a lot and I have diabetes. I eat lots of colours too and I’m pretty healthy for a diabetic whatever that proves.
Ah, again. I eat a fair amount of fish, but none of it is a color I think of as orange. White, pink, tan, occasionally red, bluefish if I can get it (that’s not really blue, but it does have a blueish cast.)
I don’t see uni and tobiko around here – well, on looking them up I suppose a sushi restaurant would have them; but I’m not usually at one, and the nearest would be some distance from me.
This method will succeed very well if you wish to impart the message that Skittles are a healthy food.
At the moment, we mostly seem to be proving that there are more non-diabetics in the world than diabetic.
I’m not sure that I’ll get enough information to be useful. 
Bump for science.
