{"id":11906,"date":"2026-04-29T18:56:03","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11906"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:56:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:56:06","slug":"what-you-eat-for-lunch-could-influence-your-immune-system-just-hours-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/04\/29\/what-you-eat-for-lunch-could-influence-your-immune-system-just-hours-later\/","title":{"rendered":"What you eat for lunch could influence your immune system just hours later"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/what-you-eat-for-lunch-could-influence-your-immune-system-just-hours-later\/\">Scientific American<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our food choices could play an important, short-term role in how our bodies respond to infections, new research suggests. \u201cStarve a cold, feed a fever\u201d&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/fact-or-fiction-feed-a-cold\/\">is a myth<\/a>\u2014but according to new research, the timing of when we eat in the short term may play a role in how our bodies&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/help-yourself-to-stronger-immunity\/\">fight off infections<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Researchers analyzed blood samples taken before breakfast from 31 study participants and then taken again six hours later, after the participants had eaten breakfast and lunch. The researchers found that their&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/nobel-prize-winner-shimon-sakaguchi-reflects-on-how-he-discovered-regulatory\/\">T cells<\/a>\u2014a type of immune cell\u2014in the postlunch blood draws appeared better prepared to fight off infection than their T cells upon waking\u2014in other words, after not eating anything for hours.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientific American Our food choices could play an important, short-term role in how our bodies respond to infections, new research suggests. \u201cStarve a cold, feed a fever\u201d&nbsp;is a myth\u2014but according to new research, the timing of when we eat in the short term may play a role in how our bodies&nbsp;fight off infections. Researchers analyzed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11907,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11906\/revisions\/11907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}