Dear Friends,
You may know that lutein is very important for supporting good vision health throughout our lifetimes.
On top of this, more recent research is finding it also plays a crucial role in certain aspects of brain health and cognitive function too.
So in my next two letters, we’re going to cover:
(i) what lutein is,
(ii) foods with a lot of lutein that you should consider eating,
(iii) what lutein does for vision and brain health,
(iv) our favorite lutein source for supplements, and some of the benefits
(v) how much you should take daily.
One point of clarification – when we’re discussing how lutein works in the body, even if I don’t say it each time, I mean lutein and its two nutrient siblings, which are two forms of zeaxanthin - the regular zeaxanthin and another form called meso-zeaxanthin.
Structurally, these 3 nutrients are almost identical, but they each do something different to support the action of the others, and this will come into play when we discuss taking a supplement.
To give you a preview – you definitely want lutein and both zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin in your supplement too.
What is Lutein?
Lutein and the zeaxanthins are potent antioxidants that are part of a class of nutrients we eat called carotenoids, which are similar in chemical structure to vitamin A.
Carotenoids help put the color in plants, and certain animals too.
For example, lutein and zeaxanthin help give vegetables like spinach, broccoli and pumpkin their green and orange colors.
Other carotenoids include lycopene, which helps put the red in tomatoes, astaxanthin, which is responsible for the orange color of the flesh of salmon, and beta carotene (a form of vitamin A) which is abundant in carrots and sweet potatoes.
Carotenoids are fat soluble, so our bodies store them and the concentration in our tissues will accumulate with regular consumption.
This is why we don’t want to consume excessive amounts of carotenoids or other fat-soluble nutrients – because too much of a good thing can become a bad thing.
But we definitely need to consume lutein from diet and supplements daily because our bodies can’t make it.
This Underscores the Importance of Lutein
In nature, about 600 different carotenoids exist.
Your eyes have a protective barrier, called the blood-retinal barrier, that allows only certain nutrients to cross and enter the back part of the eye, where the retina and macula reside.
Of these 600 carotenoids, this barrier only allows 3 to pass to the back of the eye.
These 3 carotenoids are lutein, zeaxanthin, and meso-zeaxanthin. That tells you something.
In the brain, lutein and the zeaxanthins comprise about 68% of the total carotenoid content.
This too underscores that these nutrients are probably pretty important for brain and cognitive function, because like the retinal barrier, your body has a blood-brain barrier - and it’s not going to let in anything it doesn’t want or need.
How Much is Needed Daily?
In general, I’d say most researchers agree that to maintain good vision and brain health, you should target getting about 10mg of lutein and 2mg of the zeaxanthins daily.
There are always special situations, but for most folks that’s a good guideline.
The challenging part from a diet perspective is even the best food sources of lutein usually only give you around 1mg to 2mg per serving.
So you have to eat multiple servings a day to reach the 10mg lutein target - and the 2mg of zeaxanthins target.
Given that less than 10% of the US population eats the recommended daily serving amounts of vegetables and fruits, the vast majority fail to reach the lutein and zeaxanthin target (which is why a supplement is important to bridge the gap).
A Food Tidbit You Should Share
Before we get into some of the best food sources of these nutrients, I’m going to give you a little tidbit that you can share. Even many individuals who are knowledgeable about nutrition and health miss this.
When the USDA first started publishing reports with the lutein and zeaxanthin content of different foods, they lumped them together and didn’t report the content of each.
Perhaps because they’re nutrient siblings they figured it was alright to combine them.
At some point, probably when scientists realized that lutein and the zeaxanthins have some different roles in the body, researchers said we better take a closer look at this and find out how much lutein and zeaxanthin are in these foods.
And surprisingly – they found many of the top sources of “lutein AND zeaxanthin”, were actually almost all lutein, with very little, if any zeaxanthin.
Yet, even today many very good nutritionists still cite “lutein and zeaxanthin” content of foods, when we now have more detailed and nuanced information.
Let me give you an example. The more recent USDA report found that your 5 best bets for getting lutein are eating spinach, kale, romaine lettuce, zucchini, and broccoli.
However, they found there was almost no zeaxanthin in these foods.
In fact, they found Frosted Flakes cereal, and some other cereals, had more zeaxanthin content than all 5 of those high-lutein foods combined.
Sound strange? Well it’s because these cereals are made from corn.
Generally, green foods don’t contain much if any zeaxanthin, whereas yellow vegetables and foods are likely to give you zeaxanthin along with some lutein.
So for example, yellow peppers have a meaningful amount of zeaxanthin, but green peppers do not.
Now I’m not advocating chowing down bowls of these cereals - they come with some other nutritional challenges - but the point is eating non-GMO corn will give you some zeaxanthin, where broccoli will not.
This Form of Zeaxanthin is Even More Challenging
Unfortunately, I have to throw one more wrinkle into the equation.
Even vegetables like yellow peppers and corn won’t give you meso-zeaxanthin - they only contain the regular zeaxanthin.
This is because plants don’t have the enzymes needed to make meso-zeaxanthin.
So you may be thinking “Ok Carl, so what the heck do we eat to get both zeaxanthin and meso- zeaxanthin?”
My favorite option is eggs – the yellow yolks give you both zeaxanthins and some lutein too.
However, the amount of the zeaxanthins in eggs is going to vary a lot depending on the chicken’s diet.
For some reason, the lutein and zeaxanthin content of eggs in Mexico is 2x to 3x higher than most of the eggs in the US. I’m not sure what they feed those chickens in Mexico, but someone should find out.
Fish also has both zeaxanthins, but the meso-zeaxanthin is concentrated in the skin, which most of us don’t eat.
So what’s the bottom line? It’s hard to get enough lutein from diet each day, and zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin in particular, may be even harder.
This reiterates why we’re so passionate about supplementing these nutrients.
We’ll pause here and pick it up in the next letter, where we’ll discuss what these nutrients do for vision and cognitive health, and how supplements may help.
In the meantime, you can check out the TrueVision page for more information.
Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
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