Chakras and the Rainbow Diet

fotolia_73421875Taken from Dr. Cousens book, Spiritual Nutrition

It is useful to think about the multi-colored rainbow diet from a phytonutrient point of view. In my book Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet, I correlate these colors with the chakras, beginning with red and the root chakra. Some of the phytonutrients that are associated with the red color are reservatrol, ellagic acid, and quercitin. These are found in tomatoes, watermelon, pink grapefruit, and cherries. For the color orange, we have the carotenes. They are found in mangoes, carrots, apricots, cantaloupe, peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, yams, and pumpkins. Yellow is limonene, found in lemons and other citrus fruits. And then comes green, which has the phytonutrients indole-3-carbinol (very important for preventing breast and prostate cancer), thiocyanates, zeaxanthin, sulforaphane, isothiocyanates, and lutein. Some of these, like zeaxanthin, are famous for protecting the eyes, and particularly for protecting against macular degeneration. The key food sources of these greens are arugula, cabbage, beet greens, collard greens, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, mustard greens, and watercress. The next is blue—blue is the throat chakra—and the associated phytonutrients are found in blueberries and bilberry. And then we have the third eye, which is more a combination of the purples and indigo, and includes the phytonutrient lycopene and the terpines. Foods containing these phytonutrients are grapes, strawberries, raspberries, and foods with a mixture of colors in between. And finally, the crown chakra is white, and the associated phytonutrients are the allylsulfides and quercitin. These are found in chives, leeks, scallions, garlic, onions, apples, cauliflower, and radishes. This list gives a more complete understanding of the Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine.

The Concept of the Rainbow Diet

The vibrations of food are first absorbed visually. The color and arrangement of food create a certain mental and physiological readiness. For example, depending on what foods are displayed, the content and concentration of our saliva changes. This is further augmented by our conscious responses to the aroma and taste of the food. Depending on what qualities of food we need, we become consciously and unconsciously drawn to the tastes, smells, and colors of the different foods. It is to the meaning of the colors of these foods that the Rainbow Diet awareness primarily addresses itself. The awareness of the Rainbow Diet starts with acceptance that all comes from God and is nourished by the God Force. This force has been described as OM, universal prana, universal consciousness, cosmic force, and virtual energy state. It is the primordial vibration from which all has been created. Everything, including our food, has a natural system of harmonics in relationship to this primordial vibration. In the Rainbow Diet system of harmonics, all foods have a vibrational alignment to the seven main chakras and their colors, and these colors reflect the spectrum of the rainbow.

Four Main Principles of the Rainbow Diet

Here are the four main principles of the Rainbow Diet:

1. Each food, according to its outer color, which is its reflecting

surface, can be related to the specific color and energy of a

particular chakra.

2. Different-color foods are specific for energizing, balancing, and

healing their corresponding color-related chakras

3. Each color food energizes, cleanses, builds, heals, and rebalances

the glands, organs, and nerve centers associated with its colorrelated


4. The purpose of the Rainbow Diet is to help balance, on a regular

daily cycle, each individual chakra, its associated organs, glands,

and nerve plexus, and the chakra system as a whole.

If we think of plant food as condensed, colored sunlight, we can begin to get a better feeling for the concept of the Rainbow Diet. It does not apply to flesh foods, which primarily stimulate the first chakra. It also does not apply to the colors of junk, fast, frozen, microwaved, and irradiated foods. Red candy is not the same as a red apple. Food is the principal interface between us and Nature on the physical plane, and the colors of our foods are Nature’s message or clues about the energy and biomolecular content of the specific color foods she gives us. Through the new paradigm of Spiritual Nutrition, we have arrived at the concept that food is energy as well as material form. The color of food is key to the energy pattern of food and how its biomolecular nutrients will be bonded to specific cells and tissues in our bodies. The color of a food is its signature. As we become sensitive to Nature’s efforts to communicate to us through her beautiful colors, we begin to develop a sensitivity to the particular food colors we are drawn to on a specific day as a key to what food energies and nutrients we need to balance our body. The Rainbow Diet is an acknowledgment of Nature’s effort to communicate with us. It is also a way to use the meaning of this information in an organized fashion to benefit us regularly through our daily intake of food.

By putting foods of various colors over each chakra, the author was able to determine which colors were most enhancing for each chakra. A direct correspondence was found between the colors of foods and chakras – red foods for the red or base chakra, orange foods for the sexual or orange-colored chakra, and so on. Each food peaked in the intensity of the VAS response at its specific color-resonant chakra. The food also showed a positive VAS, although less marked, at the chakra above and below its specific resonant-colored chakra. This interesting finding supports earlier statements that the chakras are linked as a total system. It also suggests that foods of different shades will affect the system slightly differently. Additionally, the spectrum phenomenon is more general rather than limited to the exact frequency of the basic color for each chakra. Because the author was already testing with the concepts of the Rainbow Diet in his mind and enough research has been done to suggest that even in double-blind studies the minds of the subject and the experimenter can affect the outcome, one cannot say that the VAS approach proves the Rainbow Diet concept, but it does give us some support for the intuitive “rightness” of the approach. It also supplies the reader with another major tool for understanding the relationship between our food and our bodies so that we can develop our own individualized diet.

Different color foods act specifically to energize and balance their particular color-coded chakras. By eating the Rainbow Diet in a patterned way, as described in the next section, we see a regular harmonic balancing of all the chakras as one system. Color healing of chakras and their related systems is not a new approach. It was used in the Golden Age of Greece, in the healing temples of Light and Color at Heliopolis, as well as in ancient Egypt, China, and India.1 In the United States, Dr. Edwin Babbitt’s book, The Principles of Light and Color,2 and the more recent classic work by Dr. John Ott, Health and Light,3 have laid a general foundation for the principles of color therapy in this country. Dr. Wurtman’s research in beaming orange into a rabbit’s eyes showed stimulation of the rabbit’s ovarian function, which is connected to the orange second chakra. For centuries, color treatment has been done through different vehicles of light transport, including water charged with sunlight through a colored filter, direct sunlight or other light source treatment through a colored filter on the body or into the eyes, use of colored metals or gems, and of course, colored foods. Color foods have been used for healing persons of different maladies. For example, red food is used for people with low vitality, which fits with low energy in the first chakra. Red foods are also used to treat people with anemia or a deficiency in the blood vitality. This too is associated with the first chakra.

In the Rainbow Diet, however, the focus is not on color therapy as a treatment for disease, but as a natural way through our daily diets to balance and tonify the body, the individual chakras, and the chakra system as a unit. It is for maintenance of health on all levels. That each food relates to a specific chakra in terms of energizing, healing, cleansing, building, and rebalancing the glands, organs, and nerve centers associated with that chakra is different from chakra healing with colored lights, which is primarily an energizing and balancing effect. For example, rose hips, which are red and therefore particularly important to the first chakra, are high in vitamin C. Vitamin C is important for building and maintaining the connective tissue we need for locomotion, heart muscle tone, ligament function, blood vessel integrity, and adrenal function. The adrenals, which energize our fight or flight response, have the highest amount of vitamin C in the body. Our muscle system supplies the locomotion for survival. The first chakra, red in color, is linked to these survival organ and gland systems. Another example is leafy greens, which are coded for the heart chakra. They are high in calcium, magnesium, and potassium, which are very important for heart function.

Application of the Rainbow Diet


Let’s look at the basics of the Rainbow Diet and the timing of meals.

—————— Morning ——————

Red, orange, and yellow-golden foods are eaten for supporting the first,

second, and third chakras. This includes fruits such as apples, oranges,

and bananas. Fruits are good cleansers and aid in any unfinished digestion

from the night before. The golden colors also include the golden

and brown grains such as wheat, rice, corn, buckwheat, oats, and rye.

The yellow-gold color also includes most nuts and seeds such as

sesame, sunflower, pumpkin, and almonds. Once nuts and seeds begin

to germinate by soaking and sprouting, they become alkaline in their

effect in the body and combine well with fruits. These soaked nuts and

seeds in the morning are particularly good for people with blood sugar


—————— Midday ——————

Yellow-golden, green, and blue foods are eaten for enhancing the third,

fourth, and fifth chakras. The predominant color for the midday meal

is green. This is the time for eating salads and other vegetable dishes –

sprouts, avocados, lettuce, and dark greens. We could also eat fruit meals

of green apples, watermelon, or fruits of other colors of the third through

the fifth chakras. Although the main color focus is green, it does not

mean that minor amounts of other color foods such as tomatoes cannot

be included. Carrots, which are in the orange-gold spectrum, also fit in

quite well.

—————— Evening ——————

Blue, indigo, purple, gold, and white foods enhance the fifth, sixth, and

seventh chakras. Gold is included in the evening because purple and

gold are complements, and the crown chakra is associated with golden,

as well as purple, Light. The main evening meal’s colors are purple,

white, and gold. In the context of arising early to meditate, light dinners

eaten before sunset are the most appropriate. Common purple foods

in the vegetable kingdom include eggplant, purple cabbage, dulse, and

beets. Rudolf Steiner said beets stimulate mind-brain function and act as

excellent blood purifiers. We can also include some greens and sprouts.

The golden foods include the golden grains such as wheat, rice, millet,

and oats. Golden nuts and seeds such as sunflower, pumpkin, cashews,

sesame, and almonds also fit in.

Extensive food lists for morning and midday colors have not been

given because these colors are easy to find. It is also important not to

be confined and make an obsessive religion out of it, so the lists have

been minimized. The blue-indigo-purple spectrum does not so readily

come to mind, so a list of some of the foods has been included.

—————— Gold-White Foods ——————

Grains: different wheat varieties, rye, oats, barley, corn, rice, sorghum,

triticale, millet, and quinoa.

Fruits: dates, golden apples, apricots, golden grapefruit, golden pears,

kumquat, loquat, oil palm, lady finger banana, breadfruit, cantaloupe,

mango, papaya, and pineapple.

Nuts and seeds: sunflower, sesame, soy, wild hazelnuts, filberts,

almonds, European walnuts, black walnuts, pistachio, brazil nut, Queensland

nut, bambarra nut, and pumpkin seeds.

Legumes: lentils, cowpea, and chickpea.

Vegetables: gold pumpkin, cauliflower, jicama, white asparagus,

white radish, and daikon radish, butternut squash.

Herbs: cinnamon, horseradish, caraway, coriander, dill, Spanish

onion, yellow or white onions, chives, leeks, scallions, shallots, garlic, and


—————— Purple Foods ——————

Grains: purple corn and amaranth.

Fruits: bilberry-whortberry, blackthorn berry, black cherry, black

figs, spartan apple, durondean pear, all varieties of purple prunes and

plums, blackberry, dewberry, raisins, all varieties of purple grapes, mulberry,

passionfruit, huckleberry, elderberry and cacao.

Legumes: Canadian wonder bean, black gram seeds, purple kidney

bean, climbing purple padded kidney bean, vanilla bean, adulation bean,

and purple beans (“green” beans which are purple in color).

Vegetables: eggplant, purple cabbage, beet, purple broccoli, kohlrabi,

turnips, purple asparagus, dulse, nori, arame, hijiki, and many purple sea

vegetables, sea kale, light purple bamboo shoots, artichoke petals, winter

radish, purple potato, olives, water chestnut, Jerusalem artichoke,

and purple sweet potatoes.

Herbs: mallow flowers, basil, heather, rosemary, sage, betony, thyme,

wild passion flower, marjoram, black pepper, milkthistle flowers, and

purple onion,

—————— Blue Foods ——————

Grains: blue corn.

Fruits: blue plum, blueberry, saskatoon berries, bilberry, and cabernet


Herbs: chicory flowers, borage, hyssop, black thorn, brookline flowers,

and pansy.