The Best Food for Healthier Lungs: Doctor Reveals Top Eats for Easier Breathing
Discover which anti-inflammatory picks help and what fare you should steer clear of
When it comes to life’s simple pleasures, few things can beat the restorative effects of a slow, deep breath. Your respiratory health is fundamental to your overall health, and you deserve to keep your lungs strong and vital. Here, a top physician shares the best foods good for lung health (including those that help ward off lung cancer and COPD), as well as the foods to keep off your plate to ensure you’re breathing easier for years to come.
The surprising connection between food and lung health
When we think about how food affects our health, the lungs aren’t usually the first thing that leaps to mind, says Neal Barnard, MD, Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, DC, and President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
“You can imagine food affecting your stomach or your gut—and you could even see foods impacting hormones, which can lead to certain diseases, like breast cancer,” he says. “But the idea that foods would affect the lungs has come as a surprise.”
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That begs the question: how did scientists discover the connection between diet and long-term lung health? “When researchers were first looking at processed meats like hot dogs and sausage, they learned that they were clearly linked to colorectal cancer and diabetes,” reveals Dr. Barnard.
And as research continued to emerge, the number of organs that processed meat was shown to affect kept growing, he says, and the lungs turned out to be one of them.
“What seems to be happening is that nitrites [in ultra-processed foods] cause free radicals to form,” explains Dr. Barnard. “And because lung tissue is extremely fragile, those free radicals damage it, increasing the chances of developing lung cancer.”
Foods to avoid for better lung health
Craving a hot dog but still want to keep your lungs healthy? He suggests (implores, really) that you choose a veggie dog instead, “because plant-based meat substitutes are always dramatically better for you.” One more food to avoid: cow’s milk, thanks to its inflammatory effects on lung tissue. Dr. Barnard suggests opting for soy, rice or almond milk instead, especially soy because of its proven cancer-fighting properties.
4 types of foods that are good for your lungs
By now, you may be tired of hearing about the microbiome. But hear us out, because your gut isn’t the only place where these colonies of beneficial bacteria live—your lungs also have a microbiome, reveals Dr. Barnard.
“That’s important, because research shows people with [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] COPD have really unhealthy bacterial growth in their lungs that seems to be contributing to the disease,” he reveals.
Just as unhealthy, processed foods can alter your gut microbiome, so too can they impact your lung microbiome, he continues. “The foods you eat are sort of the soil in which that garden grows. You can’t create a healthy lung microbiome by going to the store and buying probiotics—what you need is a healthy diet, because the foods you’re eating dictate the health of the blood circulating through the lung tissue.”
Now that you know what to avoid—namely, ultra-processed foods, especially meats—here are Dr. Barnard’s top choices for protecting your lungs:
Red produce
“Lycopene is a red antioxidant—in tomatoes, watermelon and pink grapefruit—shown to decrease cancer risk,” says Dr. Barnard. “These foods are also good for the brain and seem to have mood benefits, but the biggest takeaway is they help with fighting the inflammatory processes that can lead to [lung] disease.”
Strawberries and blueberries
If you’re wondering why ruby-red strawberries aren’t included in the category above, it’s only because they owe their crimson hue not to lycopene but to anthocyanins, pigments that may be less well-known, but are no less powerful, notes Dr. Barnard.
Blueberries also get their color from anthocyanins and are just as good for your lungs. In fact, a study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that eating two servings of blueberries (about 1 cup) per week markedly slowed the decline of lung function in older adults.
Kidney and black beans
“When Mother Nature finished coloring strawberries and blueberries, she had some paint leftover for kidney and black beans,” says Dr. Barnard with a smile. In other words, the deeply pigmented legumes are also rich in antioxidants shown to improve lung health and ward off cancer, largely by taming inflammation.
Sweet potatoes
If you’ve made it this far in Dr. Barnard’s list, you know that the common denominator tying all his choices together is color. No surprise then, he recommends sweet potatoes and other orange-hued foods like carrots, cantaloupe, mangos and papayas for their lung-pampering antioxidants.
To Dr. Barnard’s point, a study in The British Journal of Nutrition revealed that people who munched on the most carrots (100 to 200 grams) per day had about a 42 percent lower risk of developing lung cancer.
The bottom line on foods for lung health
It might be summed up in a few words: processed food, bad; eating the rainbow, good. To put a finer point on it, Dr. Barnard recalls research on people with COVID-19. “We were struck by the fact that some people who got the virus became seriously ill, and tragically, sometimes died, while others felt like they just had a bad cold.
“We started to look at whether dietary factors played a role in the severity of the illness, and we discovered that people on a keto diet—rich in fat and meat—did worse than others. The people who fared the best were on plant-based diets; about seven studies have shown that. And it makes sense, because your bloodstream runs through your lung tissue—so what we eat really matters.”
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