No food makes hair grow, not faster and not longer. Lists elsewhere claim otherwise without being able to show it. Yet what's on your plate does change something for your hair, something less spectacular and more solid.
So here are nine everyday foods, exactly what they provide, and the point at which the question stops being about food. Your plate works on what forms at the root, your habits work on the length you keep: our step-by-step tutorial walks through the six steps of the Rituel Texture® and what damages the fibre without you noticing.
What your plate can do, and what it can't
Hair is made in the follicle, under the skin, from whatever the blood brings it. The visible part, the part you style, is made of keratinised cells that are no longer connected to the body: no food can reach them. That's the only reason diet comes into a conversation about hair, and it's also what sets its limits.
Diet affects the quality of what grows out: the thickness of the shaft, its suppleness, its strength. It doesn't affect the pace of growth, which can't be controlled, or breakage, which depends on how you handle your hair. And it takes time: a change in diet concerns the hair that's forming now, not the hair you're detangling this morning.
One point applies to everything that follows: making up for a shortfall restores something, but adding more than you need adds nothing, and in two cases works against you. None of these foods works alone. What counts is eating well consistently, across the board.
- Eggs and pulses for protein, the material hair is made of.
- Spinach and pulses for iron, berries for the vitamin C that helps it get absorbed.
- Nuts and seeds for zinc and vitamin E, eggs for biotin and selenium.
- Oily fish and avocado for fatty acids, sweet potatoes for beta-carotene.
- Water, which isn't a food, and which is missing more often than anything else.
Nutrient 1Protein, the raw material
Hair is made of keratin, in other words protein. When intake stays too low for too long, the body prioritises, and it doesn't prioritise hair, which isn't vital: prolonged protein-energy deficiencies show up in the fibre, which becomes finer, loses colour and breaks (Guo and Katta, Dermatology Practical & Conceptual, 2017). It's one of the few simple, well-established mechanisms in this whole story.
Eggs tick several boxes at once: complete protein, biotin, selenium. Pulses, lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans, provide plant protein along with iron and zinc, which makes them the best value on the list if you eat little meat. Two or three portions a week bring a diet that was lacking back up to standard.
A word about a very common habit with coily hair: applying protein treatments to the fibre, on the basis that hair made of protein must want more. The two circuits have nothing to do with each other. What you eat concerns the hair that's forming, what you apply concerns the hair that's already grown out, and one never doubles the effect of the other.
Nutrient 2Iron, and the vitamin C that goes with it
Iron lets red blood cells carry oxygen, including to the follicles, and iron deficiency is among the best-documented shortfalls when it comes to hair loss (Almohanna et al., Dermatology and Therapy, 2019). Spinach contains it, as do pulses, but this is non-haem iron, which is less well absorbed than the iron in meat.
That's where berries come in, and it's the only true pairing on this list: vitamin C increases the absorption of non-haem iron, a link solid enough to be among the health claims authorised in the European Union (Regulation (EU) No 432/2012). Strawberries or raspberries at the same meal as your lentils are therefore worth more than the same strawberries mid-afternoon.
One point that matters: iron deficiency is diagnosed with a blood test and treated on prescription, never by helping yourself. Iron taken without a deficiency builds up, and that's not harmless. We come back to this below.
Nutrient 3Zinc, selenium and biotin
These three turn up in every article about hair, and for once rightly so, but not in the way people think. Zinc, selenium and biotin contribute to the maintenance of normal hair: that's the exact wording of the claims authorised in the European Union (Regulation (EU) No 432/2012). Maintenance, not growth. The distinction isn't a legal technicality. It's exactly where our knowledge stands.
Nuts and seeds are the simplest source of zinc and vitamin E: almonds, cashews, pumpkin, chia or flax seeds. A small handful a day is a realistic amount, whereas recommendations in grams tend to fall by the wayside. Eggs provide biotin and selenium, and pulses top up the zinc.
A word on biotin, now sold everywhere as a hair cure. Biotin deficiency is rare in someone who eats normally, and nothing suggests that taking it without a deficiency changes anything for your hair (Almohanna et al., 2019). What it does do is skew a number of common blood tests, sometimes enough to change how the results are read. All the more reason to talk to a healthcare professional before taking it, and to mention that you take it before any blood test.
Selenium calls for the same caution the other way round: it's the textbook case of a mineral whose excess, not its lack, causes hair loss. The margin between a useful intake and too much is narrow, and it's crossed with supplements, not with eggs.
Nutrient 4Fats, and what comes with them
Oily fish, salmon, mackerel, sardines, provide omega-3 fatty acids. France's national nutrition and health programme recommends two portions of fish a week, one of them oily. Walnuts and flax seeds offer a plant version if you don't eat fish.
Avocado provides vitamin E, which helps protect cells from oxidative stress, along with fatty acids, and it has the advantage of slipping effortlessly into almost anything. It also works as a homemade mask, as long as you don't use it too often.
Sweet potatoes provide beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A, which in turn helps maintain normal skin, scalp included. Spinach plays the same role by another route. A warning is needed here, the second on the list: too much vitamin A taken as a supplement is a documented cause of hair loss. In the form of vegetables there's no such risk, because the body regulates how much beta-carotene it converts.
Water, the most forgotten of the nine
It isn't a food, and yet it's what's most often missing from an ordinary day. Let's be clear, so as not to swap one promise for another: drinking more doesn't make hair grow faster, and good overall hydration is a matter of health before it's a matter of hair. We've devoted a whole article to the question, because it deserves more than a line: does drinking water make hair grow.
Note in passing that food counts towards the total: soups, fruit, vegetables and dairy provide a real share of the day's fluid intake, and they don't show up on any marked water bottle.
Deficiencies and supplements: a job for a doctor
Ongoing hair loss, hair coming out in handfuls, tiredness that comes with it all: none of this calls for a change of menu. A deficiency is confirmed by a test, it can't be guessed in the mirror or on a forum, and treating it is up to the doctor who diagnosed it.
So we don't recommend any supplements. A course taken blindly is at best useless and at worst counterproductive, as the cases of selenium and vitamin A show. If you're still considering one, ask your pharmacist before you start, and tell your doctor.
What needs medical advice, not a change of diet
- Hair loss that lasts, or gets worse from week to week.
- Areas thinning out, along the hairline or elsewhere.
- Tiredness, breathlessness or paleness alongside the hair loss.
- A very restrictive diet followed for several months.
- Pregnancy, breastfeeding, or recently stopping contraception.
I see beauty as something that happens on the inside as much as the outside, and a rich, balanced diet is part of it, for hair as much as for skin. But I never recommend a food supplement on my own initiative. On that ground, a pharmacist's advice comes before mine.
Ghana Elin, founderYou eat well, and your length still won't budge?
Our experts go through your routine with you online and work out whether it's down to breakage, your scalp or your styling. For hair loss, a doctor remains the person to see first.
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Sources
- Guo E. L. and Katta R., "Diet and hair loss: effects of nutrient deficiency and supplement use", Dermatology Practical & Conceptual, vol. 7, no. 1, 2017.
- Almohanna H. M., Ahmed A. A., Tsatalis J. P. and Tosti A., "The role of vitamins and minerals in hair loss: a review", Dermatology and Therapy, vol. 9, no. 1, 2019.
- Commission Regulation (EU) No 432/2012 of 16 May 2012 establishing a list of permitted health claims made on foods, Official Journal of the European Union, L 136, 25 May 2012 (zinc, selenium, biotin: maintenance of normal hair; vitamin C: iron absorption; vitamin A: maintenance of normal skin; vitamin E: protection of cells from oxidative stress).
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "The FDA warns that biotin may interfere with lab tests", safety communication, 2019.
- Santé publique France, "Recommandations relatives à l'alimentation, à l'activité physique et à la sédentarité pour les adultes", Programme national nutrition santé, 2019.
- Anses, "Les références nutritionnelles en vitamines et minéraux", collective expert report, 2021, and the Ciqual food composition table.
