I've stopped counting. Scarcely a day goes by when there is no news announcing that some fruit or vegetable has been deemed the repository of an astonishingly versatile and powerful antioxidant that can prevent heart disease or lung cancer or memory loss in old age. There's tomatoes with lycopene, carrots with beta carotene, which among other things can prevent the macular degeneration of the eyes that's so common with age.

Did I mention chocolate? Tea, of course, we've known about for some time, rich in a type of polyphenols that help maintain cardiovascular health. Blueberries have been the topic of much research lately, loaded with extremely potent antioxidants known as proanthocyanidins, which protect brains and hearts.

There's a theme here. These kinds of goodies in edibles have elaborate names for which a chemical dictionary could be of enormous help. But in fact you needn't learn a new lexicon. The important thing to know is that the nutrients you want more of come packaged largely as pigments, the substances that give foods their distinctive colors.

There are just too many possibilities to keep track of. So it's time to give up coordinating these nutritional goodies and just set a table by color. The more color, and the more variety of natural color in foods, the better. End of story.

So think broccoli and red cabbage, eggplant and tomatoes and red and yellow and green peppers and...

Of course, you'll want some wine on your table, preferably red. It's loaded with antioxidants known as flavonoids. Like other types of antioxidants, they help prevent damage to cells. Studies show that people who drink a glass of wine a day ultimately have a lower risk of developing impaired memory as they age.

The best news concerns bread. It's okay to have some bread, especially if you follow the Mediterranean custom of dipping it in a bit of olive oil, rather than slathering it with butter.

But be sure to tear off a hunk that has a portion of crust. The news from the laboratory is that crust is good. Again, it's the color—the sure sign of antioxidants. So if there's bread on the table, it should announce its presence with a well burnished crust.

The healthiest crust, I learned, is produced by long slow baking in a moderately hot oven, rather than faster cooking at higher heat. Cooking bread or any other food fast at high temperature produces a set of harmful reactions that turn the table on us, converting foods into agents of the very diseases we are most trying to avoid.