healthful

/ˈhɛlθfəl/

/ˈhɛlθfəl/

Other forms: healthfully

Things that are healthful are good for your body, mind, or overall well-being. Your dinner of barbecued potato chips, ice cream, and slices of cheddar cheese might be delicious, but it's not very healthful.

Something that has a favorable effect on your health can be described with the adjective healthful. Well-balanced meals full of whole grains and vegetables are healthful. A good night's sleep and a long walk in the fresh air are both healthful, because they promote your good health. When you are full of health, however, don't use healthful to describe yourself — instead, use the closely related word healthy.

Definitions of healthful

1. adjective

   conducive to good health of body or mind
   “a healthful climate”

   “a healthful environment”

   “healthful nutrition”

   “healthful sleep”

   “Dickens's relatively healthful exuberance”

   synonyms:

   anthelminthic, anthelmintic, helminthic, parasiticidal

   capable of expelling or destroying parasitic worms

   antimicrobial, antimicrobic

   capable of destroying or inhibiting the growth of disease-causing microorganisms

   carminative, flatus-relieving

   relieving gas in the alimentary tract (colic or flatulence or griping)

   cathartic, psychotherapeutic

   emotionally purging

   alterative, curative, healing, remedial, sanative, therapeutic

   tending to cure or restore to health

   drugless

   without the use of drugs

   good, salutary

   tending to promote physical well-being; beneficial to health

   medicative, medicinal

   having the properties of medicine

   organic

   simple and healthful and close to nature

   orthomolecular

   designating or relating to a form of treatment of mental disorders that seeks to restore biochemical balance in the body with large doses of vitamins and minerals

   preventative, preventive, prophylactic

   preventing or contributing to the prevention of disease

   recuperative, restorative

   promoting recuperation

   antiseptic

   thoroughly clean and free of or destructive to disease-causing organisms

   wholesome

   conducive to or characteristic of physical or moral well-being

   antonyms:

   unhealthful

   detrimental to good health

   crippling, disabling, incapacitating

   that cripples or disables or incapacitates

   cytopathogenic

   of or relating to or causing pathological changes in cells

   infective, morbific, pathogenic

   able to cause disease

   nonmedicinal, unmedical, unmedicative, unmedicinal

   not having a medicinal effect or not medically prescribed

   unhealthy

   not conducive to good health

   infected, septic

   containing or resulting from disease-causing organisms

   toxic

   of or relating to or caused by a toxin or poison

   unwholesome

   detrimental to physical or moral well-being
2. adjective

   free from filth and pathogens
   synonyms: sanitary

   hygienic, hygienical

   tending to promote or preserve health