Instructions: What color is your diet? If its brown and beige, "youre in deep trouble," says David Heber.

As in steaks and baked potatoes. Burgers and fries.

That color scheme may work well in your family room. But its not complementing your genes, your vision, your heart and your ability to fight off cancer and other diseases, says Heber, director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition and author of the just-published "What Color Is Your Diet?"

(Regan Books, $25).

The book recommends a far more vibrant eating approach.

In the latest attempt to get people to eat more fruits and vegetables, hues are hot.

The National Cancer Institutes 5 a Day program has a new campaign called

"Sample the Spectrum," which advises people to color their daily diets with fruits and vegetables that are bright orange, deep red, dark green, blue, purple and yellow.

While theres convincing evidence that populations that eat more produce have lower rates of chronic diseases, scientists now are learning just what makes fruits and vegetables so beneficial.

Phytochemicals - the hundreds of different compounds produced by plants that can protect them from oxygen, sunlight, bad weather, insects and other sources of harm - can provide protection to humans, too.

Color enters the picture because some phytochemicals are responsible for the pigments in produce. Anthocyanin, the substance that makes a blueberry blue, for example, has antioxidant characteristics that can be powerful cancer fighters.

Tomatoes

are red because of lycopene, an antioxidant that has been linked to lower rates of cancer, as well as decreased rates of heart disease.

Scientists believe that phytochemicals work in combination with one another.

So its not enough to just eat red or blue. The idea is to redesign your plate with a variety of brightly colored fruits and vegetables, with beige - as in chicken breast, whole-wheat bread - as an accent color.

Heber recommends that you reduce your meat portion from six ounces to three and switch from mashed potatoes to sliced carrots and from corn to spinach. Then add more colors with few extra calories, such as red pepper, tomato sauce, garlic, onions or broccoli. Top off your chicken or fish with rinds of oranges or lemons and have mixed berries for dessert, he writes.

These recommendations are part of Hebers "color code," which divides fruits and vegetables into seven color categories, with instructions to include at least one food from each color group every day.

Eating by color is "definitely a gimmick," says Melanie Polk, director of nutrition education for the American Institute for Cancer Research.

But aiming for multicolored fruit salads or "throwing on every single color you can think of as you walk around the salad bar," are ways consumers

"can get more of a variety of protective substances," she said.

Whether the public will embrace it remains to be seen.

Darcy Hall, a spokeswoman for the 5 a Day program, said research indicates that the top produce items Americans are eating are 1) french fries, 2. other potatoes and 3. iceberg lettuce. Not exactly a pigment-packed bunch.

While that regimen does not completely exclude fruits and vegetables, it emphasizes monochromatic protein sources such as meat, fish, poultry, eggs and cheese.

Still, color proponents are hoping that Americans will opt for the rainbow approach.

Vegetarian cookbook author Mollie Katzen ("The Moosewood Cookbook" and others) promotes the health benefits of "eat by color" diets on her public television cooking series. After all, says Katzen, "its a confluence of something thats beautiful, delicious - and good for you."

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