Summer’s long, hot, sunny days make cool, crisp dark green leafy salads an ideal food choice—especially when teamed with a quality protein such as wild Alaskan salmon or halibut. (I enjoy them best broiled or grilled.)

When you’re making summer salads—fruit and/or vegetable—include all the colors of the rainbow for a quick, delicious, powerfully anti-aging, skin-protective meal:

Colorful fruits and vegetables boast rare health and beauty benefits:

• Reduced risk of common cancers.
• Promote optimal memory function; reduce Alzheimer’s risk.
• Boost anti-oxidant intake to reduce "hidden" inflammation and slow external and internal aging.
• Enhanced cardiovascular health; reduced risk of diabetes and stroke.
• Extended "health-span": you may not live longer, but you will likely live in good health longer

Green lettuces, vegetables, and fruits make a great beginning, being high in health-promoting fiber and potent disease-preventive "phytonutrients" (natural plant chemicals).

Use dark green leafy greens for your salad, along with spinach, broccoli, sprouts, avocado, and asparagus. (Spinach, chard, and other cooking greens offer calcium, for strong bones and teeth.) Enjoy honeydew melon and green apples for dessert.

Over the past few years, scientists at the USDA and Tufts University developed a newly accurate measure of the anti-oxidant powers of plant foods, called the oxygen radical absorption capacity (ORAC) test.

Using the ORAC test, these researchers found that red-blue-purple fruits—blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, cranberries, pomegranates, cherries, plums, and acai (ah-sigh-ee, an Amazonian fruit explored in my next book)—offer the greatest antioxidant potential of all. Each is extraordinarily rich in potent antioxidant pigments called anthocyanins.

Add red cabbage, cranberries (which helps maintain urinary tract health), and red onions to that salad, and enjoy blueberries for dessert.

While you might not think of white as a color—there are some white-yellow veggies that are indispensable to health and beauty.

Certain white-yellow vegetables contain phytonutrients with proven preventive-health powers.

• Cauliflower—like broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage—is a cruciferous vegetable, and, as such, it is rich in potent anti-cancer phytonutrients called glucosinolates.
• Garlic, onions, leeks and chives—all members of the allium family—are rich in flavonoids, which stimulate the production of the tripeptide anti-oxidant called glutathione: perhaps the liver’s most potent protector. Glutathione enhances elimination of toxins and carcinogens; a property that helps put the allium family near the peak of the anti-cancer food pyramid.
• Garlic is especially rich in selenium and organosulfur compounds, which boast extraordinary anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, cardiovascular, and anti-microbial benefits.

The best white choices for your salad—some with a touch of healthy green or yellow—include cauliflower, garlic, onions, shallots, chives, leeks, scallions, and ginger, which is one of the most potent anti-inflammatory foods known.

Orange-red-yellow fruits and vegetables offer the essential antioxidant known as vitamin C, as well as carotenoids and bioflavonoids: two types of phytonutrients that exert powerful anti-aging effects.

The red phytonutrients best known for their health-promoting properties are lycopene (highly concentrated in tomato sauces) and the anthocyanins (found mostly in red-blue fruits).

• Enjoy liberal amounts of tomatoes, red peppers, radicchio, red oak lettuce, and red onions in your salads, while enjoying cherries, strawberries, raspberries, red apples, and enjoy super-antioxidant pomegranates for dessert.
• Add bright yellow or orange bell peppers to your salad, and savor succulent, bright orange cantaloupe for dessert.