It’s a well-known tale that spinach can help your eyesight. Our mothers and our mother’s mothers before that told us this to get us to eat our vegetables. As it turns out, what our moms have been telling us for years isn’t a tale at all.
Spinach, along with other leafy greens, has been proven to help improve our eyesight. A healthy inclusion of spinach could be the difference between poor and good eyesight.
Spinach is the ultimate leafy green when it comes to improving eyesight. The small leaf is packed with lutein and zeaxanthin, which are healthy antioxidants your eyes and body need.
These antioxidants help to prevent free radicals in the eyes. When free radicals are present, they lead the cells in your eyes to die off. They can leave you open to various vision conditions and diseases.
One disease that spinach helps to prevent is macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is a disease that affects the macula of the eye, which is found at the center of the retina. It is the leading cause of blindness in older adults.
When the macula begins to degenerate, it will slowly diminish a person’s central vision. Though the macula will eventually degenerate, foods like spinach help to keep the disease at bay.
Not only is spinach a source of lutein and zeaxanthin, it also has beta-carotene, plant derived omega-3 fatty acids, glutathione, alpha-lipoic acid, vitamins C, E and B as well as minerals calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese and zinc.
Calorie for calorie, spinach provides more nutrients than any other food. Low in calories and jam-packed with nutrients, spinach should be a regular part of your daily menu.
This post originally appeared on Rebuild Your Vision.