Feed Your Glow: 5 Beauty Foods for Radiant Skin

This article comes from our friend Caroll Lee, Founder of Provenance Meals

You are what you eat, so the saying goes.

We know that food affects your weight and energy. It’s the sustenance we rely on to fuel our busy lives. Naturally, the better the quality of the fuel, the better you’ll operate. You wouldn’t use cheap oil in an expensive sports car and expect it to run its best, would you? Similarly, eating high quality “clean” foods with abundant vitamins and minerals will help you maximize your performance potential.

transform your skin with Beauty Foods

But have you ever thought about how food can affect the way you look? Beauty is so much more than skin deep. What we eat affects the appearance of our skin and even determines how rapidly we age. If you have an outwardly radiant glow, it’s a true testament to your inner health, since your skin – your body’s largest organ – is often the first place to show signs of imbalance and illness in the body.

from the inside out

Your skin is constantly producing new cells. This cellular turnover slows as you age, and eating a diet of processed and refined foods leaves a lot of cellular junk in your body, creating more work for your body’s natural cleaning processes. Plants, whole foods, and healthy fats on the other hand, provide the nutrients your body needs for glowing skin, shiny hair, and strong nails.

Pack your diet with the following beauty foods and transform your skin from the inside out.

1—Collagen

…is the ultimate beauty food. It’s the protein responsible for the vitality and elasticity in skin, giving you the glowy radiance of youth, and keeping your hair shiny and your bones strong. Collagen from bone broth and supplements are an easy, bioavailable way to get your beauty food. You can also boost your body’s own collagen production with dark leafy greens, citrus, berries, garlic, avocado, carrots, sweet potato, wild fish, tomatoes and beets.

2—Healthy fats

From avocado, olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, seeds, and wild fish provide the omega 3s, vitamins and minerals, your skin needs to retain moisture and slow down aging. One of my favorite healthy fats is Brazil nuts. Just two to three Brazil nuts contains your daily dose of the mineral selenium, which can protect against skin cancer.

3—Prebiotics and probiotics

These affect the trillions of bacteria that live in your gut. When the microbiome is out of balance (i.e. there are more bad bacteria than good bacteria), then problems such as inflammation can arise. Chronic inflammation is a cause of acne and other skin problems, so keeping your gut healthy is a prerequisite for clear skin. Prebiotics are found in onions, leeks, garlic, Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus and raw dandelion greens. Probiotics can be added to your diet via fermented foods as well as supplements.

4—Antioxidants

Antioxidants help prevent free radicals from doing damage and speeding up the aging process. Many naturally red, purple and blue foods in particular contain a specific antioxidant called anthocyanins, which boost skin elasticity and collagen. Some of my favorite foods to increase antioxidants are wild blueberries, blackberries, pomegranates and even dark chocolate.

5—Green leafy vegetables

…such as spinach, kale, Swiss chard and collard greens, are rich in phytonutrients that reduce inflammation, promote detoxification and hydrate the skin. Antioxidant-rich and nutrient-dense, greens are a true superfood that benefits your health in numerous ways. Try to get a serving with every meal from green smoothies to salads to cooked greens with dinner.

The food we eat everyday can help us or harm us, and every bite is an opportunity to do something beneficial for our skin. Beautiful skin is a reflection of good health, inside and out.  Eat clean, eat beautiful and feed your glow!

Caroll Lee – Founder of Provenance Meals

Caroll is an avid cook, mother of two, Board Certified Health Counselor and the founder of Provenance Meals.  Her passion in life is to feed people real food — food that is raised, grown and prepared in traditional ways that are good for your health and good for the planet.  Caroll practices holistic nutrition, understanding that a healthy diet must be combined with other sources of nourishment—loving relationships, enjoyable physical activity, meaningful work and spiritual connectedness—to reach true health and happiness.