5 Foods NOT to Eat While Sick or Battling a Cold

Elizabeth Renter
By Elizabeth Renter
Posted On September 27, 2012

sick little girlIt’s that time of year, where we start passing around colds like we pass around the holiday dishes. While there are numerous sources out there for natural cold remedies (garlic, ginger, hydration, etc.), it’s also good to know which foods to avoid while sick or battling a cold. By eliminating these foods, while hopefully consuming immune-boosting foods, you can recover more quickly and reduce the severity of your symptoms.

1. Alcohol

Alcohol weakens your immune system and dehydrates you. Both of these can make your colds more miserable and leave you with an even worse morning. Grandma’s hot toddy might clear things up for a short time, but take it easy and don’t overdo it. If you come down with a cold, steer clear of most alcohol in order to keep your body optimally hydrated and your immune system functioning on high.

2. Dairy Products

Dairy products may be on the fence (in small portions), as consuming them may not aggravate some while doing so to others. Dairy products can increase mucus production, and mucus is one thing you don’t need more of when you are sick. If ice cream feels good on your throat, opt for a different frozen dessert like frozen fruit bars. These will numb your scratchy throat and deliver some useful vitamin C.

3. Juice Drinks

If you enjoy juicing and make your own 100% juices—by all means, drink them! But if you reach for your run-of-the-mill orange juice when you get a cold, you’d be better off without. Average juices are loaded with extra sugar and that sugar can reduce the ability of white blood cells to fight illness. Any benefits you might get from the vitamin c are nullified by the sugar inside.

What should also be pointed out from avoiding juices is: avoid sugar.

4. Fried Foods

Stay away from excess fats when you are sick. This goes for processed snacks and fried foods. Foods high in fat produce inflammation and inflammation produces a less active immune system.

5. Fast Food and Processed Foods

Surprise, surprise – it should be most obvious to steer clear of fast food and processed foods while sick. Fast food and most processed foods are void of nutritional value; that is, they bring hardly anything to the table in terms of boosting the immune system or amplifying your health. Not only are much of these foods made from genetically modified foods, but they also contain a slew of immune-suppressing ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, MSG, artificial colors, FD&C Red #40, dimethylpolysiloxane, and much more. And despite some irresponsible hospitals serving up McDonald’s to their sick patients, that doesn’t mean these foods are any more valuable.

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So this is how to prevent a cold: avoids those foods that make you sick and consume those foods that boost your immune system. When you are sick—stick with a diet of whole, fresh foods and plenty of liquids. Drink tea, eat soup, use spices like turmeric, ginger, and garlic, consume some honey, and nurse yourself back to health naturally. Generally, the worst symptoms of a cold will only last a few days when you have a high functioning immune system. So, treat your whole body with nutrition and not just your runny nose with an over-the-counter drug.

18 responses to “5 Foods NOT to Eat While Sick or Battling a Cold”

  2. you guys missed the boat on this article on two counts. First, the advice about juice and sugar is abbreviated to a fault. This is another example of failing to understand the underlying issue behind the advice that just continues to reinforce the problem bahaviors in us all. An uninformed reader could run to Whole Foods for Certified Organic Pure Orange Juice and think they are bypassing the issue you raise and for which you then fail to offer correct advice. The problem is this: the consumption problem we all have can be boiled down to ONE CONCEPT: whole food vs. processed, extracted, separated foods. What we need to do is consume the ENTIRE ORANGE (minus the outermost orange skin which causes allergic reactions to most of us), and this especially includes the WHITE layer which is the most important part of citrus of all its parts because it is where the phytonutrients are found which dramatically activate the Ascorbic Acid part of the orange. Ascorbic Acid is easy to come by – cheap and ineffective! It is the bioflavinoids, rutin, and hesperin which is missing in our diets, which is found in the parts of produce which we throw away (skin, membranes, seeds). The seeds offer proven antibiotic, antifungal, antipathogenic natural medicinal properties that make the simple vitamins function, and getting these into our diet any other way will cost you serious money through a retail supplement! The problem is that when retail or even homemade Orange Juice is manufactured, we generally use a juice squeezer function, then throw away (or feed the compost/worms with) the nutritional parts of the fruit. The correct advice should have been to 1) incorporate lemons and limes as much as tolerable due to the unwanted natural fruit sugar replace some of your oranges with limes/lemons – sugar is sugar, no matter where it comes from, increases inflammation and feeds cancer cells no matter if from standard OJ, french fries, white sugar in tea, or bagels; 2) if you are not already, switch forever to the whole food blenderized method of making what is sloppily referred to as “Juice.” Juice is technically squeezed out of the fruit and the bulk of the nutrition is discarded; not only is this biologically wasteful, it is environmentally wasteful, financially wastful, and time-wasteful. You can use a $10 blender from Goodwill, an $80 Bullet, or whatever, the process is the same – grind up with liquid, the WHOLE FRUIT or VEGETABLE, which liberates the maximum amount and variety of nutrients which are otherwise bound inside the cellulose, and this solves all the problems at once. Best to use tea instead of water and my two favorites are Green Tea for Green, Yellow, Orange Drinks and Hibiscus Flower Tea for Red Purple Drinks and always buy Organic or Wild Harvested or Homegrown for the simple reason the planet is so polluted and our food system so co-opted by the unholy dollar that it is near-impossible to protect ourselves any more. Try to phase out all products, especially foods, from China because they have no regulations or safeguards and many heavy metal streams are at crises levels of toxicity for animal consumption..
    The second major error in this article is the admonition about fats when sick. The actual issue is consumption of the inflammatory fats – the incorrect fats are only part of the problem, and the other half of the problem and the one thing we can do which will fix the underlying reason we get infections in the first place: WE NEED TO DRAMATICALLY INCREASE OUR CONSUMPTION OF THE CORRECT FATS — the omega 3 fats (flax, chia, etc.) and the correct saturated fat which is easily found in coconut oil. Do your own research on such educational sites as Natural News and mercola.com and get in the drivers seat about your preventative strategies and self-healing options.

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  6. A better list would be what i can eat when sick, this list eliminates most of the ‘American’ diet. While i’m smart and can think for myself. Most will just read this list and say, “so, i starve?”

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  8. I agree. When Im off of grains I don’t have joint pain (as a massage therapist people assume you’ll always be in pain. When grain free — almost pain free)

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  10. Wheat and most other grains should be on this list. They cause inflammation. When I stopped eating grains all of my sinus problems disappeared.

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