The Skin Diet

By Angie Mougey-Tranzitionz Salon

Just as consuming too much chocolate or drinking too much alcohol so vividly proves, what goes into your system can show up on your face. But certain foods will also protect your skin against the elements and fight off the ravages of time. For example, tomatoes and green tea can help you avoid sunburn damage and wrinkles. Foods rich in antioxidants help neutralize free radicals, reducing the damage they cause, including saggy skin and wrinkles. Although eating antioxidant-rich tomatoes will not take the place of using sunscreen, the lycopene in tomatoes has been shown to improve the skin’s natural SPF (sun protection factor). The antioxidants abundant in green tea and other foods also help combat the inflammation caused by free radicals. Neutralizing free radicals and preventing them from forming does more than help you look good. The DNA damage they cause is responsible for 80 to 90 percent of skin cancers, according to Karen Collins, a registered dietitian at the American Institute for Cancer Research. So doing everything possible for protection is smart.

For further proof of how antioxidants help your skin look good, a study led by Mark L. Wahlqvist, M.D., professor of medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, suggests that eating antioxidant-rich foods can help reduce wrinkling. Comparing groups of Greeks, Australians, and Swedes who were more than 70 years old and who ate dark leafy greens, beans, whole grains, yogurt and healthy fats like olive oil to groups of compatriots who ate more meat, sugar, and saturated animal fats, this international study found less wrinkling on sun-exposed areas of their body in those who ate the Mediterranean-style diet.

While eating antioxidants benefits your skin, wearing them may protect it even more. Antioxidants like green tea show up in sunscreen because they enhance the skin’s ability to protect against the sun’s damaging rays. Certain vitamins applied to your skin can also assist in shielding against sun damage. If you’re in a pinch use the oil from a vitamin E capsule before, during, and after sun exposure. It has more protective and anti-aging benefits for the skin applied topically than taken orally. Products containing vitamin C can be useful, too.

Eating a variety of antioxidant-rich foods can replenish and compensate for what the sun destroys. Besides tomatoes and green tea, these are good choices: watermelon, papaya, and apricots all contain lycopene, almonds and other nuts are rich in vitamin E, carrots, cantaloupe, mangoes, and spinach are good for beta-carotene, and lemons and green peppers contain ample amounts of vitamin C.