Foods That Fight Hot Flashes: What the Trials Found

Body · The Reading Room · 8 min read · Why the lists of miracle foods do not hold up, what two diet trials actually found, and the part of it that seems to matter most

Based on the published research of Candyce H. Kroenke, MPH, ScD, Research Scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research and lead author of the Women’s Health Initiative analysis of diet, weight change and hot flashes. Kaiser Permanente researcher profile · Division of Research · the study on PubMed

There is no single food that switches the heat off. There is some evidence that a way of eating, and what it does over a year, turns it down.

The list promised nine. Flaxseed, soy milk, chickpeas, something called maca, and a smoothie that apparently needs a blender you do not own.

You bought the flaxseed. It is in the cupboard, next to the evening primrose oil from the spring. The hot flashes, meanwhile, have not read the list.

If you have been searching for foods that fight hot flashes, you deserve a straight account of what the diet trials found, including the fact that the answer is less about any one ingredient than the internet suggests.

Informational, not medical advice, and worth taking to your clinician rather than instead of one. This is a reading of published research. We are not clinicians; the findings belong to the researchers named below, and the plain-English version is ours.

The short answer: no individual food has strong evidence behind it, and The Menopause Society’s 2023 statement does not recommend soy products or herbal supplements for hot flashes.¹ What does have evidence is weight loss, which the same statement recommends,¹ and dietary change that produces it. In the Women’s Health Initiative, women who lost 10 percent or more of their body weight on a lower-fat diet had higher odds of eliminating hot flashes and night sweats.² A smaller, unblinded trial of a low-fat vegan diet with daily soybeans reported large reductions, but its design leaves real room for doubt.³

The skim version

Not recommended for hot flashes by The Menopause Society: soy products, herbal supplements, and several other popular approaches.¹
Recommended: weight loss, among a short list of evidence-backed options.¹
The WHI analysis covered 17,473 women. Losing 10 percent or more of body weight was linked to 56 percent higher odds of eliminating hot flashes and night sweats.²
The WAVS trial randomized 84 women to a low-fat vegan diet with half a cup of cooked soybeans daily, or usual diet, for 12 weeks.³
Total hot flashes fell 78 percent on the diet and 39 percent in the control group, but participants knew which group they were in.³
That control group improvement is worth noticing: it happened with no change in diet at all.³

In this article: Do any foods fight hot flashes? · The weight finding · The soybean trial · The claims, side by side · The one move · FAQ

Are there foods that fight hot flashes?

Not in the way the lists imply.

The Menopause Society’s 2023 nonhormone therapy position statement, developed by a panel led by Chrisandra Shufelt of Mayo Clinic, looked at the evidence for a wide range of approaches. It did not recommend soy products or herbal supplements for treating hot flashes, alongside cannabis, cooling techniques, yoga, acupuncture and several others, because the evidence was insufficient or did not show benefit.¹

That is a finding about treating hot flashes specifically. It is not a verdict that these foods are bad for you, and many of them are perfectly good things to eat. It is simply that the promise of a specific food turning off a hot flash has not held up well when tested.

What the same statement did recommend, among a short list of options, is weight loss.¹ That is where the more interesting diet research sits.

Does losing weight help hot flashes?

The largest piece of evidence comes from the Women’s Health Initiative, the enormous American study that ran through the 1990s and 2000s.

Candyce Kroenke, an epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research, led an analysis of 17,473 women in its dietary modification trial, in which one group was assigned to a diet lower in fat and higher in whole grains, fruits and vegetables. The question was whether the diet, or the weight change that came with it, affected hot flashes and night sweats.²

Weight loss was associated with higher odds of eliminating symptoms. The size of the effect grew with the amount lost: losing 10 pounds or more was linked to 23 percent higher odds of eliminating hot flashes and night sweats, and losing 10 percent or more of baseline body weight to 56 percent higher odds, compared with women who maintained their weight.²

The authors were careful to say the mechanism is not completely understood, and that the effect of dietary change separate from weight loss needs more research.² But it is a large study, and the dose-response pattern, more loss linked to more benefit, is the kind of signal that is harder to dismiss.

What the research found

The study. Kroenke and colleagues, “Effects of a dietary intervention and weight change on vasomotor symptoms in the Women’s Health Initiative”, Menopause, 2012. 17,473 women in the WHI dietary modification trial.

The finding. Compared with maintaining weight, losing weight was associated with higher odds of eliminating hot flashes and night sweats: odds ratio 1.14 for any weight loss, 1.23 for 10 pounds or more, and 1.56 for 10 percent or more of baseline body weight.²

The limitation: weight change was not itself randomized, so women who lost weight may have differed in other ways. The mechanism linking weight loss to fewer hot flashes is not established, and the separate effect of the diet itself remains unclear. The women were postmenopausal and enrolled in a trial designed for other outcomes.²

If food has become one more thing you are trying to get exactly right on top of everything else, it may help to step back and look at the whole picture before adding another rule. Start here.

The source for this piece

Candyce H. Kroenke, MPH, ScD

Research Scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, with a doctorate in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research examines how social, psychological and lifestyle factors affect women’s health outcomes, particularly in breast cancer, and she has led several studies funded by the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society.

What we read: Kroenke, C. H., et al., Menopause, 2012.²

Where to follow her work: Kaiser Permanente Division of Research · Kaiser Permanente researcher profiles · ResearchGate · the 2012 study, free full text

Does soy help hot flashes?

This is where the headlines and the evidence part company a little.

The WAVS trial, published in Menopause in 2023, randomized 84 postmenopausal women with at least two moderate to severe hot flashes a day. One group followed a low-fat vegan diet and ate half a cup of cooked soybeans daily, with weekly dietitian support. The other kept eating as usual. Seventy-one women finished the 12 weeks.³

The results were striking on paper. Total hot flashes fell 78 percent in the diet group, and moderate to severe ones fell 88 percent, from 5.0 a day to 0.6. In the control group, total hot flashes fell 39 percent.³

But the design matters. The trial was unblinded, so women knew whether they were in the diet group, and they had been recruited expecting a study of a soy diet. The diet group also got far more support and attention. The trial was funded by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an organization that advocates plant-based eating, and led by its president, Neal Barnard.³ And diets like this often lead to weight loss, which, as the WHI data suggests, may itself be doing some of the work.

Notice the control group, too: a 39 percent drop with no change in diet at all.³ That is a large improvement without any change in diet, and it is exactly why unblinded diet trials are hard to read.

Foods that fight hot flashes: the claims, side by side

Claim	What the evidence shows	Limitation
A specific food or supplement stops hot flashes	Not supported; soy products and herbal supplements not recommended for hot flashes¹	Individual products vary; the statement grades the overall evidence
Losing weight reduces hot flashes	Supported; weight loss recommended,¹ and linked to higher odds of eliminating symptoms²	Observational within a trial; mechanism unclear
A low-fat vegan diet with soybeans cuts hot flashes	Large reductions reported in one 12-week trial³	Unblinded, small, advocacy-funded; weight loss a possible explanation
Diet alone, without weight change, helps	Unclear; needs more research²	Hard to separate from weight loss in existing studies

Read down the middle column and one row stands out as best supported. It is not a food. It is a change in body weight over time.

Who else has measured this

Neal D. Barnard, MD, FACC, is president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and led the WAVS trial of a low-fat vegan diet with daily soybeans, which reported a 78 percent reduction in total hot flashes over 12 weeks.³
Physicians Committee profile · Wikipedia · WebMD contributor bio · the 2023 trial on PubMed · LinkedIn

Chrisandra L. Shufelt, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine and Chair of General Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic, led the advisory panel for The Menopause Society’s 2023 nonhormone therapy statement, which recommends weight loss and does not recommend soy products or herbal supplements for hot flashes.¹
Mayo Clinic research profile · Mayo Clinic biography · the 2023 statement on PubMed · X

Not one food. A direction of travel, over a year.

When this belongs with a doctor

Talk to a clinician before taking soy or herbal supplements if you have had breast cancer or take other medicines, and before any restrictive diet if you have a history of an eating disorder, diabetes or kidney disease. If hot flashes are disrupting sleep or work, dietary change does not have to be the first or only step; evidence-backed treatments exist.

The sentence to take with you: “I have been trying to manage my hot flashes with diet and supplements. What does the evidence support for me, and should we talk about treatment options alongside any changes to how I eat?”

The one move: stop buying the list, start measuring the trend

Put the next jar of supplements back on the shelf. The money is better spent elsewhere.

Instead, if weight has crept up and you want to address it, set a modest, sustainable direction rather than a rule about any one ingredient: more vegetables, whole grains and fruit, less of what you know is excess for you. The WHI signal was about change sustained over a year, not a week of flaxseed.²

And keep a simple hot flash count alongside it, one mark per flash, once a week. If the trend moves, you will see it. If it does not, you have a clear record to take to a clinician, and nothing to feel you did wrong.

Common questions

What foods fight hot flashes?

No single food has strong evidence for stopping hot flashes, and The Menopause Society does not recommend soy products or herbal supplements for them.¹ Weight loss, including through dietary change, has better evidence.¹²

Does soy help with hot flashes?

The Menopause Society’s 2023 statement does not recommend soy products for hot flashes.¹ One unblinded 12-week trial of a low-fat vegan diet with daily soybeans reported large reductions, but its design limits how far it can be trusted.³

Can losing weight reduce hot flashes?

The evidence suggests it can. In the Women’s Health Initiative, losing 10 percent or more of body weight was linked to 56 percent higher odds of eliminating hot flashes and night sweats.² Weight loss is among the options The Menopause Society recommends.¹

Do spicy foods and alcohol trigger hot flashes?

Many women notice personal triggers, and it is reasonable to track your own. The trial evidence reviewed here focuses on overall diet and weight rather than individual triggers, so a symptom diary is the best guide to what affects you.

Is a plant-based diet good for menopause?

One trial reported large reductions in hot flashes on a low-fat vegan diet with soybeans, though it was unblinded and funded by a plant-based advocacy group.³ A diet rich in vegetables, fruit and whole grains was also part of the WHI intervention linked to benefit through weight loss.²

The one move

Skip the next supplement. If weight has crept up, choose one sustainable direction for how you eat, and keep a weekly hot flash count beside it for three months.

If this is one more area where you have been trying to fix things quietly on your own, seeing the whole picture together may point to a better first step. Start here.

The flaxseed was never going to do it on its own. That was never a failure of discipline.

On the researchers. Candyce Kroenke is an epidemiologist cited for the WHI analysis of diet, weight change and hot flashes. Neal Barnard leads an advocacy organization that promotes plant-based diets and led the trial described here. Chrisandra Shufelt is cited for The Menopause Society’s statement. None of them is your clinician.

Sourcing, disclosure and disclaimers

This is not medical advice. Blue Leaf Journal publishes general information for a general readership. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a treatment recommendation, or a substitute for care from a clinician who knows your history. Informational, not medical advice: see your clinician.

We are not clinicians. Blue Leaf Journal is an independent publication and its bylines carry no medical or academic credential. We read published research and translate it. The findings belong to the researchers and institutions named and linked above; the plain-English rendering is ours, and so is any error in it.

No affiliation and no endorsement. Blue Leaf Journal is not affiliated with Candyce H. Kroenke, Neal D. Barnard, Chrisandra L. Shufelt, Kaiser Permanente, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Mayo Clinic, The Menopause Society or the Women’s Health Initiative. None of them has reviewed, approved or endorsed this article, and none of them is responsible for it.

No commercial relationship. Nobody named above paid for or was paid for this coverage. There are no affiliate links, no sponsored placements and no product recommendations in this article.

How this was checked. Every figure above was checked against the cited source on 16 September 2026, and each source is linked below. If you find something we have got wrong, write to norawhitfield@blueleafjournal.com and we will correct it and say that we did.

References
1. “The 2023 nonhormone therapy position statement of The North American Menopause Society.” Menopause, 2023. PubMed
2. Kroenke, C. H., et al. “Effects of a dietary intervention and weight change on vasomotor symptoms in the Women’s Health Initiative.” Menopause, 2012. PubMed · free full text via PubMed Central · ScienceDaily summary
3. Barnard, N. D., et al. “A dietary intervention for vasomotor symptoms of menopause: a randomized, controlled trial.” Menopause, 2023. PubMed · MDedge report

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Nora Whitfield writes for Blue Leaf Journal, where the working rule is that a mechanism you can name is easier to live with than one you cannot. She reads the limitations section before the conclusion, and passes on what she finds there.

Written by Nora Whitfield for Blue Leaf Journal. Updated: 16 September 2026.