From counting sheep to using white noise to employing weight blankets: people try countless ways to improve their sleep. However, poor sleep has serious consequences and affects heart and metabolic health, memory, learning ability, productivity, emotional balance, and even relationships.

Now, scientists say that a surprisingly effective remedy for better sleep may already be on your shopping list. Researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine and Columbia University have found that eating more fruits and vegetables during the day is associated with more restful, higher-quality sleep at night.

Investigating the Interaction Between Diet and Sleep

“Changing your diet could be a new, natural, and inexpensive approach to achieving better sleep,” said co-author Esra Tasali, MD, director of the UChicago Sleep Center. “The temporal relationships and objectively measured results of this study are important steps toward filling a gap in public health knowledge.”

Previous studies have shown that too little sleep can lead people to adopt less healthy eating habits, which often include higher fat and sugar content. But despite the influence sleep has on well-being and productivity, scientists know far less about the reverse relationship—how diet affects sleep itself.

While previous research has linked higher fruit and vegetable consumption to better sleep, this study was the first to demonstrate a link between diet and objectively measured sleep quality on the same day. For the study, healthy young adults logged their daily food intake using an app and wore a wristband monitor that tracked their sleep. The scientists analyzed a metric called “sleep disruption,” which measures how often a person wakes up during the night or switches between lighter and deeper sleep stages.

16 percent Improvement in Sleep Quality

The results showed that daily eating habits were closely related to the participants’ sleep quality that night. Those who ate more fruits and vegetables—and more complex carbohydrates such as whole grains—had longer periods of deep, undisturbed sleep. According to the team’s analysis, people who followed the CDC’s recommendation of five servings of fruits and vegetables per day saw an average improvement in sleep quality of 16 percent compared to those who did not eat any fruits and vegetables. “Sixteen percent is a very significant difference,” Tasali said. “It’s remarkable that such a significant change could be observed in less than 24 hours.”

What’s Next

Future research will investigate whether this is a causal relationship, explore the biological mechanisms involved, and test the findings in larger and more diverse groups. Nevertheless, the researchers say that the current findings strongly suggest making fruits, vegetables, and whole grains a daily habit to achieve better sleep health in the long term. “People always ask me if there are foods that will help them sleep better,” said co-author Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep & Circadian Research at Columbia University. “Small changes can have an impact on sleep. That’s encouraging — because better rest is in your hands.”