The Best Foods to Eat for Cold and Flu Season
With kids back in school, it’s time to get serious about fighting off those viruses, and one of the best ways is with your family’s diet.
As a Together Counts™ ambassador, we know the importance of eating a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, lean protein, whole grains and healthy fats for managing weight and well-being. Whether you are eating at home or dining out at restaurants, a healthy diet is also a powerful way to boost your immune system naturally.
A well-rounded diet including foods like those listed above, along with regular exercise, has been shown to help boost your immune system. Here’s how:
- Getting enough protein, specifically lean protein, from lean cuts of red meat, fish, poultry, seafood, beans, nuts and low-fat dairy can help with antibody production. Antibodies are keys to fighting off infection.
- Including foods like low-fat yogurt and fermented dairy products (such as kefir) with live cultures in your diet can provide probiotics (good bacteria) to help you maintain a healthy digestive system. Research shows again and again that a healthy digestive system is linked to a strong immune system.
- Vitamin C, an antioxidant that can help activate your immune system, is a popular choice to ward off cold and flu viruses, but did you know that it’s not just found in citrus? Fruits and vegetables like bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, tomato, and greens are all high in vitamin C and make a tasty addition to any meal.
- Enjoy zinc-rich foods like oysters, nuts, lean red meat and yogurt in your daily diet. This trace element is essential to proper function of cells in the immune system.
Give your immune system the boost it needs now and throughout cold and flu season with these healthy foods. Find them at restaurants nationwide in Healthy Dining and Kids LiveWell menu choices, featured on HealthyDiningFinder.com and recommended by our team of registered dietitians.
Healthy Dining’s signature web and mobile site, HealthyDiningFinder.com, is the only search engine of its kind providing personalized dining out recommendations validated by Healthy Dining’s team of registered dietitians. HealthyDiningFinder.com features more than 4,000 menu choices from participating restaurants nationwide enabling diet- and nutrition- conscious consumers to find nutrition information and Healthy Dining options emphasizing lean protein, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and unsaturated fats. HealthyDiningFinder.com also features a Kids LiveWell platform, a program developed by the National Restaurant Association, to help parents find restaurants offering healthier meals for children. With 25 years of expertise in the restaurant industry and hundreds of thousands of restaurant recipes analyzed for nutrient content, Healthy Dining is the most experienced restaurant nutrition services provider in the world.
For more healthy dining options check out these other sweet reads from Together Counts!