Diet And COVID-19 Severity

The Study

The association between eating a healthy diet and risk of COVID-19 outcomes was examined in almost 43,000 subjects from Harvard’s Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professional Follow-up Study. A healthy diet score was created to see how closely subjects followed a Mediterranean diet. The results were interesting:

-Subjects who most closely followed a Mediterranean diet had a 22% lower chance of contracting the virus when compared to those who followed it the least.

-When they did contract COVID-19, subjects who most closely followed a Mediterranean diet had less severe infections and were less likely to be hospitalized.

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2022; 116:1672-81.

Take Home Message

I know that most people are tired of thinking about COVID-19. I am too. However, it appears that it will continue to be a part of our lives, at least for the immediate future. It has taken some time for good quality research to be conducted on COVID-19 and it is now being published in large amounts.

This study suggests that you can protect yourself from catching COVID-19 and/or a bad case of the virus by eating right.

The authors believe that a healthy diet improved immune function and decreased inflammation in their subjects. This is the most likely reason for the benefit seen here.