September 8th 2026
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WellBeing Magazine
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Daniel Xu is eimele’s Group Vice President, ANZ CEO and also holds a Master’s Degree in Bio Science. Here, he shares the importance of eating a diverse range of fruit and vegetables and how to start.
Most people grew up with the “five a day” rule. What did you discover about eating across the colour spectrum that made you want to build a formula around it?
Five a day is a very good foundation, but what we became increasingly interested in at eimele was the question of diversity. Eating enough fruit and vegetables and eating a diverse range of them are not necessarily the same thing. You might have five servings a day, but if they’re always the same few fruits and vegetables, you’re still getting a narrow range of plant compounds.
Different coloured plants contain different combinations of phytonutrients — including polyphenols, carotenoids and many other naturally occurring plant compounds. So we started asking not just, “How many plants are we eating?” but “How much variety are we actually getting?”
That was really where the idea for Essential Rainbow began. We wanted to make plant diversity easier to bring into everyday life by combining a broad spectrum of colourful plant ingredients with a more comprehensive nutritional system. It’s not intended to replace real fruit and vegetables. It’s about helping people add greater nutritional diversity to the diet they already have.
Your four-week pilot study showed some interesting early observations. 89.5 per cent reported improved energy. What did that research teach you about how people perceive and experience the shift toward greater plant diversity?
The first thing I’d say is that this was a small, early exploratory study. These were self-reported experiences from participants, so we certainly wouldn’t describe them as clinical proof. But the feedback was interesting.
Nutrition is different from a medicine. Many nutritional changes can be gradual, and people may not necessarily notice them immediately. Yet over those four weeks, some participants began telling us that they felt differences in their energy, while others noticed changes in their skin.
What was interesting wasn’t really the 89.5 per cent on its own. It was that these observations gave us a signal worth investigating further. It made us ask a much more interesting question: What actually happens when someone consistently increases the diversity of plants and nutrients in their diet every day? And that isn’t a question we should answer from self-reported experiences alone.
The next step is to investigate it much more rigorously — with larger studies, controlled human research and objective biomarkers — and see wh=ether some of these early observations can also be detected scientifically.
For someone who’s never heard of polyphenols, what are they and where do they come from in plants?
Polyphenols are basically a large family of compounds that plants naturally produce. You’ll find different types in berries, grapes, tea, cocoa, herbs and all sorts of colourful fruits and vegetables. What’s interesting is that different plants contain different polyphenols. So the greater the variety of plants and colours in your diet, the broader the range of plant compounds you’re exposed to.
We’re learning more and more about these compounds and their relationship with things like antioxidant defence, inflammatory processes and the gut microbiome. But I don’t think the average person needs to remember the word “polyphenol” or worry about chasing one particular compound.
Where should we start when it comes to eating more colour and plant variety?
I think it can be very simple: start by looking at how many colours are on your plate. You don’t have to completely change your diet overnight, and you certainly don’t need to count every plant you eat.
Start with one small habit: try adding one more colour or one more plant to each meal.
Add some berries at breakfast. Put another green vegetable into lunch. Add tomatoes, pumpkin or beans at dinner. And remember that nuts, seeds, herbs and spices all contribute to plant diversity as well.
The important thing isn’t having one exceptionally healthy day. It’s about turning diversity into something you do consistently.
That’s why I like the idea of “Eat the Rainbow.” It takes something that can sound quite complicated nutritionally and turns it into something anyone can remember: Look at your plate. Add a little more colour and a little more variety.
And of course, real life isn’t perfect. We’re not going to eat an ideal diet every single day. That’s where something like Essential Rainbow can play a role — not as a replacement for real fruit and vegetables, but as a convenient way to add greater plant and nutritional diversity to your everyday diet.
For more information, visit eimele.com
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https://www.wellbeing.com.au/community/holistic-q-a/eating-the-rainbow.html
