This Friday, May 22, marks the International Day for Biological Diversity. Every year, the United Nations uses this day as an opportunity both to celebrate the Earth’s stunning biodiversity and to recognize our task to protect it.
Unfortunately, due to biodiversity loss from industrialization and unsustainable land use, the planet’s health is threatened. Nearly a quarter of wild food species—plant and animal—are decreasing in abundance, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Biodiversity is not only important for the planet—but it’s important for human health, too. Eating a range of fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains can help immune systems by providing the full range of nutrients, from vitamins C and D to zinc and iron. And COVID-19 is revealing the urgency of improving immunity—and the power of food to protect us.
“There’s a range of vitamins, of flavanols, of minerals that have been looked at, that we know improve the immune system function. … Several specific nutrients seem to have activity against COVID-19-specific proteins,” Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and the dean of the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, told me on Food Talk Live this week. “What’s really interesting, beyond the general immune-boosting effects and the COVID-specific protein effects, many of these same nutrients or other nutrients blunt or soften this excessive inflammatory response that’s really what’s causing deaths in COVID.”