Too much unhealthy food can gradually damage a liver, while healthy eating habits can protect the liver and even help the liver recover from prior damage.
Nutrition plays an important role in maintaining liver health. Livers do many important things, such as processing nutrients and filtering toxins from the body. Poor nutrition can damage the liver, and over time this can become liver disease.
A diet high in saturated and trans fats, sugar, and processed foods can increase the risk of developing MASLD/NAFLD. Maintaining a balanced and healthy diet that is rich in nutrients and low in unhealthy fats and sugars is essential for liver health.
It can be difficult to maintain a healthy diet without good information. Luckily, nutrition labels are an easy way to learn about the foods that you eat.
Consuming too much food or too many calories leads to weight gain, increasing the risk of MASLD/NAFLD. Understanding serving size is an important part of avoiding this. Many foods and drinks may appear to be a single serving when they are not. For example, an energy drink may appear to be a single serving when it actually contains more. Some foods can be easy to misunderstand. For example, a bowl of cereal may include much more than a single serving. Measuring out foods to get a feel for what a serving size looks like can be helpful in managing ones own diet.
Minimizing carbohydrate intake is essential to keeping your liver healthy. Grams of total carbohydrates is the only information that you need. Sugar and other carbohydrates are included in "total carbohydrates," and do not need separate attention.
Fat content is also important to look at and understand. Saturated and trans fats are especially imporant to avoid. If the saturated and trans fat grams are more than a third of total fat grams, the food should be considered unhealthy for the liver.
Unhealthy foods do not need to be removed entirely from the diet. Eating them in moderation is fine, but understanding what moderation looks like can be challenging.
Foods like sweets, red meat, or pork are best kept to small portions one or two times per month.
Liver-healthy food isn't hard to find if you know what to look for. Foods high in sugar and certain types of fat can damage the liver. Some foods are high in nutrients that can improve liver health.
Most Vegetables
Most Fruits
Beans and Legumes
Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
Whole Grains
Herbs and Spices
Beef
Pork
Sugary Drinks
Pies
Candy
Cakes