Foods, herbs, and phytoconstituents in alleviating metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease: A review

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a silent pandemic and one of the most serious risks associated with a variety of factors that can lead to life-threatening liver disease. It encompasses a range of conditions, from simple steatosis to steatohepatitis, cirrhosis, and eventually, liver cancer. Different foods and herbs have traditionally been used to treat liver disease. The ongoing research has focused on natural remedies for alleviating NAFLD. Therefore, a comprehensive review is warranted to gather updated information on foods, herbal remedies, and phytochemicals to reduce NAFLD. In this review, sixteen foods, nine herbs, and seven classes of phytochemicals have been reported to reduce NAFLD. The mechanisms of action have been discussed. Publications were gathered from various online databases, including ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and PubMed. Keywords used in the searches were ‘foods and NAFLD’, ‘herbs and NAFLD’, and ‘phytochemicals and NAFLD’. The foods and food products discussed included flaxseed, cinnamon, green tea, soybean, curcumin, licorice root, olive and canola oils, soluble fibers, garlic, spinach, vine tea, emblic, walnut, red yeast rice, bayberry, and barberry. The herbs reported to have hepatoprotective effects in NAFLD include qianggan, chlorella, danning pian, yiqi sanju, bitter chamber, shatter stone, danshen, ginkgo biloba, and milk thistle. Furthermore, important classes of phytoconstituents, such as polyphenols, anthocyanins, stilbenes, alkaloids, terpenoids, saponins, and dietary phospholipids, have shown protective effects against NAFLD. The mechanisms of hepatoprotection in alleviating NAFLD have been discussed. The selected foods, herbs, and phytochemicals are suitable alternative medicines for treating NAFLD. • Foods, herbs & phytoconstituents ameliorating NAFLD have been reviewed. • Foods have been shown to cure NAFLD better than herbs. • Herbs are also ameliorating NAFLD.