Seven Foods for Healthy, Radiant Skin
Everybody wants healthy, radiant skin, and while women often spend more time and money on perfecting their look, there’s not a man out there who honestly would not love a big face full of beautiful skin! However, a lot of people make one big mistake when it comes to skin care: not eating the right foods.
Spending money on high-quality products that are free of chemicals and potentially harmful ingredients is great, but without the right diet your skin is never going to look its absolute best. Incorporate these seven foods into your diet and get you and your whole family healthier, more radiant skin!
1. Strawberries
When it comes to skin health, the mainstream media would have you buying blueberries by the bushel and drinking a gallon of pomegranate juice for breakfast. While there’s nothing wrong with blueberries and pomegranates, strawberries also contain high amounts of vitamin C that can help in the fight against aging.
Why is that vitamin C so good for your skin? Consuming vitamin C helps break down free radicals that cause damaged cells, as well as broken down collagen that can lead to wrinkles and skin that isn’t very supple looking.
Best of all, they’re much easier to come across and tend to be more affordable than blueberries and pomegranates or pomegranate juice. Kids love them too and they make a great healthy dessert with a little bit of Greek yogurt.
If you’re so inclined you can even make a face mask from crushed strawberries and use it about once a week for 10 minutes.
2. Low Fat Yogurt
Low fat yogurt is excellent for curving food cravings and for getting your day started without a short stack of pancakes. It’s also wonderful for your skin because it aids in digestion.
If the connection between proper digestion and healthy skin isn’t immediately clear, consider the fact that inflammation can lead to dull looking skin and make conditions like rosacea look a whole lot worse. A serving of low fat yogurt each day can help make a dramatic improvement when it comes to blemishes and even acne as well.
3. Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes are a holiday staple for a lot of people, and while they do make a delicious pie, they’re also wonderful for your skin. That’s because sweet potatoes contain a large amount of vitamin A, which can help reduce wrinkles and fight the signs of aging.
Many skin care companies even use it in their very expensive commercial products.
4. Olive Oil
Olive oil is a real powerhouse in the kitchen because it can serve so many different purposes. Sauté broccoli with it, toss it in your salad or simply use it with a drop of balsamic vinegar for a healthy dipping sauce for your favorite loaf of bread.
When it comes to your skin, olive oil is so beneficial because it is powerful antioxidant with anti-inflammatory properties. Make it part of your regular cooking and eating routine — at the expense of the less healthy fats like butter and vegetable oil — and you’ll notice you have smoother, softer and more radiant skin pretty fast.
Olive oil is also better for your heart because it’s packed with monounsaturated fats and the good type of HDL cholesterol.
5. Pumpkin
When you think of pumpkins you probably think of carving them and putting them on your porch for Halloween. Or maybe you think of a warm slice of pumpkin pie or pumpkin ravioli at your favorite Italian restaurant.
Whatever you think of, including pumpkin in your diet is quite beneficial for your skin because filled with vitamins C, E and A, all of which keep free radicals that can damage your skin at bay. Along with fighting free radical damage, pumpkins contain carotenoids that can help prevent wrinkles.
Pumpkin is also full of enzymes that help cleanse the skin, so making a scrub out of pumpkin flesh is something you should consider before you ditch that carved pumpkin. You can even use the ground up seeds as an exfoliating ingredient!
6. Salmon
Salmon gets a lot of attention as a food that is great for your body and wonderful for your skin. While you might already know that you should be eating salmon, it’s definitely worth repeating here because it truly is one of the best foods to add to your diet.
Salmon is so good for your skin because of its high omega-3 fatty acid content, which helps spur collagen production. That means fewer fine lines and wrinkles for you and a more pleasant glow around your cheeks.
For the best results, stick with Atlantic salmon that’s wild-caught instead of farmed. Salmon that grow up on farms are often given antibiotics and they just don’t have the same level of omega fatty acids as the salmon that come right out of the ocean.
Wild salmon also tends to taste better and have a richer flavor, so it’s worth the small additional cost just for your taste buds alone.
7. Almonds
Most people think of almonds as a type of nut, and manufacturers who have been putting them in mixed nut products for years don’t make it any easier to understand that they’re actually seeds. What isn’t hard to understand is how beneficial for your skin eating almonds on a regular basis can be.
Loaded with vitamin E, a known sun blocker, almonds can greatly reduce your risk of skin damage related to UVA and UVB rays from the sun. Over the course of a lifetime, eating almonds can help you maintain young looking skin that’s got a healthy glow not caused by sun damage.
The way your skin looks can convey good health and who doesn’t want to look healthy!
You don’t need to invest in tons of makeup or spend $1,000 per month on skin care products, but if you eat the foods above, you should see a noticeable improvement pretty quickly.
