9 Ways To Eat Your Way To An Immunity-Boosting Diet

What you eat can keep you cold - and flu-free all winter - and fight disease better than anything in your medicine cabinet.

- Joanna Powell

Have you ever known someone who never seems to gets sick? One of those lucky souls who’s just flat-out bulletproof even when flu fells her family or rages through her workplace? Truth is, it’s not just luck—or even vigilant hand washing—that’s keeping these people virus-free. Evidence is growing that the secret to staying well during cold and flu season is due in large part to the food on our plates, in the same way that a healthy diet can prevent diabetes, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, and is increasingly thought to play a role in battling other illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and cancer. “A good diet can easily help you fight off those germs for the winter,” says New York City dietitian Brooke Alpert, MS, RD, CDN, and the author of The Sugar Detox: Lose Weight, Feel Great and Look Years Younger (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2014). “Through improved nutrition, we can strengthen our immune systems, so we become more powerful in fighting the germs that cause colds.”

Wendy Bazilian, DrPH, RD, a nutritional consultant in La Jolla, CA, says that her clients mostly come seeking help with weight loss, allergies or sports-performance issues—not to stave off sniffles and sneezes. “But months later, many report with some surprise that they haven’t been sick in ‘the longest time’ or that when the rest of the family came down with a bug the kids brought home, they either didn’t get it at all, or they had a milder or shorter version,” she notes. “People initially come in to improve their nutrition for other reasons—but lo and behold, their immune system benefits!”