Will certain foods improve my eyesight?
There's a lot of old wives tale here. It turns out that our eyes do need vitamin A, and if we're vitamin A deficient you can actually lose your vision. Now, its almost impossible to be vitamin A deficient in America, or with a western diet, because vitamin A is in a lot of foods, including milk and green leafy vegetables. So, about the only way you can get vitamin A deficient nowadays is having severe intestinal disorders that prevent absorption of vitamin A. So, basically you don't have to worry about vitamin A deficiency. Now, the other part of this question is, well maybe I'm not vitamin A deficient, but can I improve my eyes by nutritional supplements? the answer is for most people: no. For example, eating more carrots will not make your vision better. Taking multi-vitamins doesn't help, in general, to prevent eye diseases. Now, there is one exception: it turns out that if you have a moderate degree of macular degeneration, there are certain vitamins which can help retard the progression of that macular degeneration. These vitamins include zinc, copper and some other nutritional supplements as well. Now that is only a very tiny percentage of people. A lot of people have heard about this, and so all sorts of people are taking eye vitamins nowadays. Almost certainly most of that is a total waste.
