Synonyms for "healthy" in "healthy foods"

In the editorial I am writing, I repeatedly say "healthy foods". I searched healthy up in a thesaurus so my paper would not sound so repetitive. The results were ones such as

fit, active, lively, robust, strong, etc.

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/healthy

I am not looking for "healthy" that means athletic or fit, I am looking for healthy that means good for you.

The sentence in which "healthy foods" is used is

Eating healthy foods and drinking water five to seven times in a day is essential to an active brain and body.

You might say nutritional foods, according to the BBC:

"The key is to eat a balance of highly nutritional foods, that when consumed together, do not contain too much of any one nutrient, to avoid exceeding daily recommended amounts." 1

You could also speak of nutritious foods, from the same article:

"Calculated and ranked by scientists, these are the 100 most nutritious foods:"1

Attribution

"Future - The World's Most Nutritious Foods." BBC. January 29, 2018. Accessed March 21, 2018. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180126-the-100-most-nutritious-foods.

wholesome vocabulary.com

conducive to or characteristic of physical or moral well-being

Synonyms of wholesome foods (my summary - see link for full text):

healthful
healthy
sound
financially secure and safe
alimental, alimentary, nourishing, nutrient, nutritious, nutritive
heart-healthy
good for you, healthy, salubrious
hearty, satisfying, solid, square, substantial
providing abundant nourishment
organic ... foodstuffs w/o synthetic fert/pesticides/hormones
salubrious

I would suggest wholesome.

Conducive to or indicative of good health or well-being.

There are a lot of examples for wholesome food.

Origin: from whole (healthy) + -some. (TFD)

thesaurus.com also has entries for "health food", but as Hot Licks points out in the comments, they are all more specific: "low fat food", "low calorie", "natural food".

If you want more generic terms, I suggest using adjectives like "balanced", "optimal", "healthy" with nouns like "diet", "food", "nutrition" to create alternative two-word phrases.