Nutrition for Your Eyes

20/20 Eyeglass Superstore® strives to keep you updated on eye health news and every month offers attractive schemes on eye exams, eyeglasses, contracts, prescription glasses, and more . We hope this extract from Dr. Murray’s article on the best nutrients for your eyes helps you to plan the nutrition needs for yourself and your family.

Dr. Michael Murray is an educator, lecturer, researcher, and health food industry consultant, and the author of more than 30 books.

Nutrients play an enormous role in preventing and treating the leading causes of impaired vision in North America–cataracts and macular degeneration. Certain nutrients are essential in maintaining eye health, preventing these diseases, and improving visual function when these conditions do develop.

A diet high in richly colored fruits, particularly berries and grapes, and vegetables, particularly green leafy vegetables, helps to lower your risk for cataracts and macular degeneration. Initially it was believed that this protection was the result of increased intake of antioxidant vitamins and minerals. However, various “nonessential” food components, such as non-provitamin A carotenes like lutein, zeaxanthin, lycopene, and flavonoids, were later shown to be even more significant in protecting against cataracts and macular degeneration than traditional nutritional antioxidants like vitamin C, vitamin E, and selenium.

Some of the most important nutrients for improving eye health are:

Lutein is found mostly in dark leafy greens, pistachios, peas, cucumber and celery.

Vitamin C is found in Bell peppers, kale, kiwi, papayas, oranges and clementines, strawberries.

Zinc is found in Oysters, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, crab

Flavonoid-rich extracts of blueberry, bilberry, pine bark, or grape seed also offer valuable benefits in improving eye health as well as protecting against cataracts and macular degeneration.

Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oils play an important role in prevention of eye conditions like macular degeneration.