Leafy greens

Leafy greens are the main dietary source of inorganic nitrate, which converts to nitric oxide and lowers blood pressure measurably in short trials. Observational work links higher intake to slower cognitive decline, but people who eat more greens differ from those who do not in almost every way that matters, and no long trial has tested it. Treat the blood-pressure finding as solid and the brain findings as unproven.

Reviewed 2026-09-20

Official sources

How this list was built

We searched Europe PMC for English-language papers published since 2010 whose title contains “leafy vegetable” or “green leafy” or “dietary nitrate”, kept meta-analyses, systematic reviews, trials and observational studies, because a diet or exposure like this cannot be randomised for long and its outcome evidence lives in cohorts, then ranked them by study design first, then recency and citations. Retracted papers are removed.

Open a paper to read its abstract and ask for an AI brief of what it found.