20 Best Foods for Eye Health and Eyesight Improvement

Foods and lifestyle choices affect your overall health as well as your eye health. Consuming a healthy and nutrient-rich diet and living a healthy lifestyle can significantly promote your eye health and reduce the risk of eye health problems such as macular degeneration and cataracts. 
 So what are specifically the best foods to enhance your eye health? 
In this article, we have discussed some important healthy foods which are very beneficial for your eye health. Read the article to find out more.

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The best foods for eye health and maintaining good eyesight

20 Best Foods for Eye Health and Eyesight Improvement

Healthy Food Choices

Healthy food is defined as a variety of foods that provide the body with the nutrients needed to maintain its health and provide it with energy, in addition to generating a good feeling for the body. These include carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in addition to minerals, vitamins, and water.

In fact, healthy nutritional practices begin at an early stage in a person’s life, as breastfeeding helps healthy growth, cognitive development, as well as other health benefits in the long term.

 A healthy diet is essential to maintaining overall health and helps prevent malnutrition in all its forms and non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.  

A balanced and healthy diet is also essential to maintaining eye health and safety.  Many people suffer from poor or distorted vision or may have difficulty seeing near or far objects. 
Good attention to the eyes has a vital role in maintaining their health. Proper and healthy food is an integral part of eye health. 
The safety of the eyes depends on certain foodstuffs such as vitamin A and vitamin C, fatty acids, minerals, and antioxidants.

Read more: How to Make Healthy Food Choices

Why is Good Nutrition Important for Healthy Eyes?

The eyes need a variety of different antioxidants to keep them healthy and strong, including lutein, beta-carotene, omega-3 acids, zinc. 
There are many ways and means that will help you to keep your eyes healthy and reduce your chances of developing eye diseases. 
One of these methods is eating certain types of healthy foods. Good nutrients can help overcome age-related vision problems. 
While eating highly processed foods and a diet high in saturated fat and sugar can increase the risk of eye problems such as macular degeneration and cataracts. 
Other factors, such as dehydration and diabetes, can also lead to eye conditions and chronic vision problems. 
So, you must choose a balanced and healthy diet and good nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins C and E, lutein and zinc. 

Eye Diseases Prevented by a Healthy Diet

There are many diseases and health conditions that may affect the eye, which can often be stopped and avoided if an appropriate diet is followed. Eye diseases that you may be able to prevent with healthy food include:

• Age-related macular degeneration, which leads to a progressive deterioration in vision and limits your eyesight.
• Cataracts, a health condition that causes blurry vision.
• Night blindness, or nyctalopia
• Glaucoma
• Dry eyes.

Read more: Types of Eye Diseases and Disorders: Symptoms and Causes

So, try to follow a rainbow-colored diet, i.e. a diet rich in naturally colored materials of vegetables and fruits. 
With a simple change in your diet, you can maintain the health and safety of your eyes in the long run. 
In fact, there are certain food items that must be consumed regularly in order to protect you from various vision problems. 
These foods help you cope with an existing disease or help you cope with any other problems that may occur later.

20 Best Foods for Eye Health and Maintaining Good Eyesight

Good nutrients are very important and necessary for the needs of the body's systems to function in a healthy way, especially eye health. 
Maintaining good health includes eating a healthy diet and an active lifestyle. This usually indicates heart health, bone strength, and healthy architecture. But maintaining healthy also means maintaining a stronger sense of vision. 
With age, many people develop various vision problems. Some eye diseases; cataracts, or dry eyes and other problems can be avoided by following some simple nutritional guidelines and eating healthy foods that are beneficial to the health of the eyes. 

These are the most important foods necessary to strengthen your eyes:

1. Fish like salmon and sardines

The retina requires two types of omega-3 fatty acids: “DHA” and “EPA” and they are found in fatty fish. These acids protect the eye from macular degeneration and cataracts. The low levels of these fatty acids are associated with dry eyes.

Fish generally contain large amounts of fatty acids and omega-3s that are essential to a healthy lifestyle and are very important to the health of the retina, as they prevent dry eyes. Salmon and sardines are better because they contain more omega-3s. Omega-3 helps protect the tiny blood vessels surrounding the eyeball. 
Try to eat several servings of fish (especially salmon) per week, and try to resort to marine fish species, not those that were raised in private ponds or farms. 
This is because marine fish have higher levels of omega-3 acids and lower levels of saturated fat. Therefore, care must be taken to eat salmon or sardines regularly to improve vision.

2. Eggs 

Eggs are one of the very important foods for eye health, as yolk (egg yolks) contains high levels of vitamin A, zinc, and lutein, which are all essential nutrients for eye health. 
Vitamin A usually works to protect the cornea from any potential damage. Zinc contained in an egg helps your body use lutein and zeaxanthin from egg yolk and ensures the integrity of the retina and generally helps improve night vision. 
Other elements found in eggs help reduce the chances of developing some visual health problems caused by aging and enhance the amount of protective pigment in the eye that controls central vision.

3. Poultry Meat

Poultry meat is one of the easiest to eat foods in many forms, as it can be eaten grilled or added to salads. Poultry is a healthy alternative to red meat, which contains a large percentage of fat. 
Poultry meat is rich in zinc, potassium, protein, and iron, all of which are essential elements of visual strength.
 Zinc is a vital component of the poultry meat, which transports vitamin A from the liver to the retina, used to make protective melanin pigment and is responsible for producing enzymes associated with eye health.
As for iron, it helps to fight eye damage, which keeps eyes healthy with age.

4. Milk and Dairy Products

Dairy and milk products are generally very good for the health of your eyes, due to their high content of vitamin A, in addition to other important nutrients such as zinc, as vitamin A helps protect the cornea of the eye and zinc pulls vitamin A from the liver and brings it to the eye to benefit from it.

It is worth noting that zinc is present in the structure of the eye in its various parts, such as the retina and the choroid eye.

It is preferable that you obtain dairy products and milk from animal sources that were bred in natural environments and relied on feeding them on herbs, in order to obtain the most nutritional benefit.

5. Dark Leafy Green Vegetables

Cabbage, spinach and cauliflower are rich in vitamins C and E and carotene compounds necessary for the retina, rich in vitamin A and reduce the long-term risk of eye diseases including macular degeneration and cataracts. 

6. Spinach

Spinach contains almost a large percentage of all types of vitamins, but the most important of these elements are vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta-carotene. Spinach also contains high concentrations of antioxidants that help to combat eye diseases.  
As for zeaxanthin and lutein, it helps increase the intensity of the pigment in the lens area, which acts as a natural eye-protective eye, by absorbing about 40-90% of the harmful sunlight.

7.  Bell Peppers

The red pepper is an excellent source of vitamin C, good for blood vessels in the eye. Scientists believe that it reduces the risk of developing cataracts. Brightly colored peppers also contain eye-friendly vitamins A and E. 

Green pepper is a vital ingredient for maintaining vision strength. Green pepper also contains a high content of antioxidants and other vitamins that will protect the eyes. 

Peppers can be eaten in fresh form, in sauces, or sandwiches, or they can be added when cooking different dishes.

8. Wheat Germ

Wheat germ is cholesterol and sodium-free food. If you eat wheat germ daily, this can give you a massive boost of nutrients for eye health and help prevent common eye diseases and disorders such as age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, and glaucoma.

9.  Almonds

Almonds are like other nuts and seeds that are important to eye health, due to their high content of vitamin E, which protects the body from some unstable molecules and electrolytes that usually target healthy tissues in the body.

Consuming vitamin E at a regular rate will work to combat any possible health consequences that may arise with age, so try as much as possible to consume 15 milligrams of vitamin E per day or the equivalent of approximately 23 tablets of almonds per day. 
You can also get vitamin E from other sources rich in it, such as sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, and pistachios.

10. Sunflower Seeds and Nuts

About 28.34 grams of these seeds or almonds contain half of the amount of vitamin E recommended by the USDA for adults every day. A large study found that vitamin "E", along with other nutrients, can help slow age-related macular degeneration, and may also help prevent cataracts.

11. Curly Kale

Curly kale is one of the superfoods because it contains essential and important vitamins and minerals, in addition to antioxidants and other elements such as lutein, which is found in high levels in other foods such as eggs. 
The nutrients present in the kale are very important to prevent some serious eye diseases.

It is worth noting that the body needs approximately 10 milligrams of lutein, while a portion of 100 grams of kale cabbage contains approximately 11.4 of lutein, more than the recommended portion!

12. Squash

Your body cannot make lutein and zeaxanthin, but you can get it from pumpkins or squash all year round. Summer squash contains vitamin C and zinc, and winter squash gives you vitamins A and C as well as omega-3 fatty acids.

13. Oranges

Oranges are a fruit of the citrus family known to be rich in vitamin C, which is essential for eye health. This vitamin (which is especially found in fresh vegetables and fruits) works to protect and promote the health of the blood vessels in the eyes. 
Vitamin C, if taken with other nutrients, can also help protect the eyes from health problems that may arise with age.

14. Sweet Potato

Orange-colored fruits and vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, melons, mangoes, and apricots, contain high levels of beta-carotene, a form of vitamin A that helps reduce night vision problems. Sweet potatoes can be eaten either cooked, grilled or fried like regular potatoes.

15. Carrots

Carrots are very important to the health of the eyes, and like the egg yolk, carrots contain high levels of vitamin A, beta-carotene and antioxidants. Nutrients like beta-carotene, help protect the surface of the eye and prevent infections or serious eye diseases.

Carrot is one of the foods that can be easily added to many dishes and salads, in case you do not want to eat it in its fresh form. It is also advised to provide carrot juice to infants at the beginning of serving solid food.

16. Tomatoes

Red tomatoes are also among the foods that are beneficial to the eye.  tomatoes contain very beneficial health pigment called lycopene. Tomatoes contain carotenoids similar to those on carrots and have similar beneficial effects.

Tomatoes not only protect the eyes from the harmful effects of ultraviolet rays but also prevent the weakening of the eye muscles that causes vision deterioration. 
In addition, tomatoes also contain vitamin A and vitamin C, both of which are very important to maintain eye health, vitamin ( A) protects the cornea, while vitamin C reduces the risk of glaucoma and cataract, so tomatoes are among the foods that are beneficial to the eye.

17. Berries

Berries are a useful food for the eye because it contains vitamin C and is an antioxidant that is important for eye health. 
Vitamin C also reduces the risk of glaucoma, cataracts and vision loss associated with aging,

Lutein is found in most foods beneficial to the eye and is also present in berries, as it increases blood circulation in the eyes and improves night vision and thus prevents night blindness.

Berries are available in all markets, you can eat them at breakfast or as juice, so it is one of the best foods that are beneficial to the eye.

18. Beans and Legumes

Beans and legumes have high fibers that help maintain sharp vision at night and delay macular degeneration.

19.  Broccoli

 Broccoli contains a mixture of nutrients, such as vitamin A, lutein, zeaxanthin, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E, which are all antioxidants that protect cells in your eyes from free radicals.

20. Oysters 

Oysters are one of the best sources of the mineral zinc, which is commonly enjoyed by healthy eyes.  The mineral zinc helps vitamin A produce melanin, an eye-protective pigment.

Read more: 10 Best Brain Foods That can Help Prevent Dementia

How can You Improve Your Eyesight Naturally?

Aside from following a healthy diet, you can maintain your eye health by making simple lifestyle adjustments such as:

• Wear sunglasses when out.
• Stay away from smoking.
• Maintain a healthy weight.
• Wear eye protection when practicing somewhat violent sports, or when conducting scientific experiments.
• Maintain healthy blood pressure.
• Visit the ophthalmologist once every 1-2 years.

Read more: Eye Diseases and Disorders: How to Protect Your Eyes Naturally