Recipe: Rainbow Salad for Great Gut Health

Salads don’t have to contain lettuce!  This salad is hearty. It’s full of fiber, prebiotics and polyphelols, which feed the good microbes that live in our gut.  For more on which foods to eat to support a healthy gut microbe population, see my blog post here.

You may substitute ingredients according to taste and what you have available.  Try to keep as many colors as possible in the salad – something red, something green, something orange, something purple.  All these colored foods provide different beneficial plant nutrients.   Variety in our foods also helps support a nice and diverse gut bug population.  That’s a good thing, for our health.

Gut-loving Rainbow Salad

Serves 4 as a main, or 6 as a side dish.

Salad ingredients

• 2 cups cooked wild rice.  You can also use cooked brown rice or black rice.
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 cup cooked sweet potato, cubed (steamed or roasted)
• 1 cup chopped raw celery.  If you aren’t a fan of celery you could use diced cucumber.
• 2 avocados, flesh scooped out and cubed
• 1.5 cups cooked pinto beans.  Quick version – 1 can of cooked beans (such as chickpeas, kidney beans, lima beans) drained and rinsed.
• Chopped leaves of 1 bunch of coriander/cilantro (or substitute for mint or flat leaf parsley)
• Optional addition for gut health-boosting – 1/2 a red onion, finely diced

Dressing

• 1 Tbs Dijon mustard
• 3Tbs extra virgin olive oil
• 3Tbs apple cider vinegar
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Topping

• Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds – about 1 Tbs of each per serving.  For more crunch and flavor, you can toast these before serving.

Preparation:

Add all the salad ingredients to a large bowl.  Mix gently, so you aren’t breaking apart the sweet potato and avocado, until well combined.

In a small bowl, whisk together the dressing ingredients.  Just prior to serving, add the dressing and top each serving with a generous sprinkle of sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

Take your time to enjoy mindfully, for good digestion 🙂