A Dietitian Reveals Her Favorite Foods For Optimal Eye Health

At mbg, we know that optimizing our eyesight is an integral part of our well-being. In terms of healthy aging, it's crucial to protect our eyes—vision is especially vulnerable to degeneration as we age. That's why it's important to incorporate eye care into our wellness routine. It's also the reason we focused our sixth Supper Series event on vision and hosted it on World Sight Day1.

According to Feller, our eyes truly are windows to the soul. "Clear eyes are an indicator of internal health," she says on the mindbodygreen podcast.

What Feller means is, we can recognize signs of certain health complications through our eyes. In particular, Feller has seen blood vessels burst in the eyes of patients with uncontrolled high blood pressure. While that conjures a pretty intense image, it's interesting that our eyes have the ability to showcase what's going on with our health.

She also notes that people who have diabetes have a significant amount of redness and yellowness in their eyes, which relates to their internal endocrine dysfunction. So, we should think of our eyes as our master communicators—they're a great way to see (pun very much intended) into what's going on underneath the surface.

Antioxidant-rich foods have been shown to reduce the risk of macular degeneration, says Feller. "It's not going to be the end-all, be-all," she notes. "But it slows the progression of some of those diseases."

Specifically, she mentions lutein and zeaxanthin as the star antioxidants for eye health. Studies have shown that these two antioxidants can reduce the risk of cataracts, age-related macular decline, and other chronic eye diseases2. Even better, these antioxidants can be found in local supermarket favorites—spinach, corn, broccoli, and eggs, to name a select few.

But in terms of vitamins, carrots reign supreme in Feller's eyes. "Of course I love carrots, right?" she jokes. Carrots seem to be the quintessential eye-healthy snack, but there's a perfectly good reason they've earned the title: Carrots have a remarkably high vitamin-A content, which has been shown to play a role in preventing age-related eye disease3.

The next vegetables on Feller's vision-boosting grocery list are those of the leafy green kind—think kale, spinach, and dandelion greens. These veggies are rich in vitamin K, which is primarily known for keeping arteries from clogging. However, research has shown that this vitamin is beneficial for eye health as well4, especially as we age.