Recipe for Beautiful Skin

As this month’s featured beauty partner guest blog post we have a great article from Anna Rathbun who is a Certified Nutrition Consultant. She reminds us that every meal is an opportunity to look and feel better. Enjoy these tips for beautiful skin and incorporate them into your next meal for amazing benefits!
—Amy Wall

Are you looking for glowing, radiant and blemish free skin?
The food you enjoy is the very material used to create your skin. The three elements of beautiful skin are elasticity, which helps the skin to spring back from a lovely smile; cleansing, which allows toxins to be excreted without a glitch; and moisture, which keeps the skin smooth and supple. Combine these three elements on your dinner plate and you have a recipe for beautiful skin.

A beautiful skin diet
For elasticity think fresh fruits and vegetables with vibrant colors for vitamin C and bioflavonoids. Strawberries in season and tomatoes right off the vine are high in vitamin C, which is important in forming collagen, the connective tissue in your skin. Vitamin C degrades quickly so Florida oranges in September are not your best bet. Dark berries and the skin of citrus fruit are high in bioflavonoids, which help vitamin C make your skin elastic and don’t degrade with time. While fresh berries are seasonal and vitamin C degrades quickly, you can enjoy bioflavonoids from the white inside pith of an orange peel year ’round. The skin of berries and citrus help protect the fruit from the sun and can do the same for your skin.

For moist, supple skin you need a balance of good fat in the diet. Enjoy a variety of nuts and seeds for healthy oils and antioxidants. Think of Brazil nuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds, hemp, chia and flax seeds. Beneficial oils are very fragile, so purchase your nuts and seeds fresh and store them refrigerated. Healthy animals are also high in good fat; wild salmon, sardines and grass fed beef contain Omega 3 fat, which helps to reduce inflammation and may prevent dry skin. Don’t be afraid of the fat in nuts, seeds and healthy animals. These good fats can improve skin and even help with weight loss.

For blemish free skin, clean the body from the inside with green leafy vegetables and fiber foods that eliminate toxins. Enjoy a salad with added dark leafy greens, like kale and cabbage, and add high fiber foods like broccoli, flax seeds, legumes and whole grains. In addition, Brazil nuts are high in selenium, a great skin antioxidant. These foods work like a broom, gently sweeping away excess toxins so they don’t clog up your skin.

You are literally made of the food you eat, so eating the right food can dramatically improve elasticity, cleansing and moisture of the skin. Those foods can also be tasty and satisfying, leaving you with a full belly and a smile on your beautiful skin. You have the power to choose foods that support or degrade the skin and any other organ of the body. Which foods are best for your body?

Anna Rathbun is a Certified Nutrition Consultant in Mendocino, California. She helps people enjoy delicious “skin food” that supports their health. MendoDiet.com

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