Le Formulaire Nutrition || Feeding your skin
Le Formulaire believe that “true beauty comes from within” and while there is no one food that will give us perfect skin, a nutrient rich, balanced diet can help us to achieve and maintain healthy skin.
Our skin is the largest organ in the body. It is very busy carrying out its many essential roles as a barrier, a temperature regulator, a sensor and a fluid balance. A number of factors impact the health and appearance of our skin and these include our genetics, age, hormone levels, diet and lifestyle. There is ample evidence that the foods we eat can help to promote various aspects of skin health – from hydration to firmness and elasticity.
As a dietitian I am passionate about informing my patients about the most up to date evidence so that they can optimise their lifestyles and take control of their own health. In this series I hope to provide you with some simple tips that you can follow to enhance not only your skin but overall wellness. I wanted to start with two key principles that I firmly believe in when it comes to food and those are balance and variety.
Balance
Aiming for a balanced diet is so important for our wellness. Research has shown that a diet rich in antioxidants, vitamins, minerals as well as wholegrain carbohydrates, sufficient protein and healthy fats combine to help to protect and repair our skin from free radical stressors that cause damage over time.
Complex Carbohydrates
Complex carbs take our bodies longer to break down meaning the energy is released slower and is longer lasting and keeps us fuller for longer. Wholegrains, oats, many fruits and vegetables also provide a whole host of vitamins, minerals as well as fibre. Most whole grains are rich in fibre, which is essential for the health of our digestive system and has reduces our risk of disease (1).
Healthy Fats
These include mono- and polyunsaturated fats as well as omega-3 fatty acids and provide us with essential nutrients for our general and heart health including vitamins A, D, E and K and are also important for promoting healthy skin. Good sources include oily fish, nuts, seeds, olive oil & avocado. We should aim for fat to make up less than 35% of our energy intake (or around 70g per day).
Protein
Protein is found in abundance in many plant and animal sources and is essential for growth and repair. We should aim to include a variety of dairy, lentils and beans, fish and meat to obtain all of the essential amino acids that our skin needs. Protein has gained a lot of attention in the media in recent times. Whilst requirements differ depending on a variety of factors, lack of adequate protein is rare in Western populations. We will dive into some common myths surrounding protein in this series.
Vitamins & Minerals
Plants are abundant in micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). The more variety you eat, the lower your chance of becoming deficient in any one nutrient. In a future article, we will look closer at vitamins and minerals for our skin and overall wellness, where to find them and when supplements can be beneficial in optimising our health. To give you a flavour:
Zinc found in nuts, fortified wholegrains, red meat, poultry and fish helps with wound healing and protecting against UV damage.
Selenium is a powerful antioxidant mineral which helps to provide elasticity to the skin and protects us from the sun. This can be found in brazil nuts, (just two per day provides us with our full requirements!), fish, eggs and meat.
When it comes to balance, aiming to incorporate these elements into each meal helps to ramp up the nutrient value of those moments of nourishment. A balanced plate will look different for everyone but as a general rule of thumb, we should fill around half our plate with salad or vegetables, just over a quarter with lean sources of protein and a fist sized amount with wholegrain carbohydrates.
Variety
Variety is the spice of life, and it is no different when it comes to feeding our skin from within. A colourful, varied diet invites lots of nutrients to our plate and can bring amazing tastes and flavours to our palates. Research has linked food enjoyment with longevity and has been shown to have a positive impact on digestion. No single food or food group can supply all the nutrients that our skin and bodies need, and it may be reassuring to know that no foods should be completely avoided either.
‘Eating the rainbow’ is the best way to get the widest variety of nutrients from our fruit & vegetables.
You may not have realised, but brightly coloured fruit and vegetables are rich in phytochemicals which are naturally-occuring protective molecules with a range of health benefits. These act as powerful antioxidants and help our skin to retain youthful firmness by increasing the stability of cellular membranes.
Each colour represents different combinations of phytochemicals thereby representing different health benefits. This is the rationale for aiming for (at the very least) five portions daily, and wherever possible, to pick at least one serving of fruit and veg from each different colour group everyday. For example, even picking different coloured peppers adds to the variety of nutrients you are receiving.
By choosing the most richly coloured fresh (or freshly frozen!) fruit and vegetables in the supermarket you are usually opting for the foods that contain a higher concentration of phytonutrients. By eating a balanced and varied diet, we should be able to provide our bodies with most of the vitamins and nutrients it needs. Next time we will delve deeper into a few key vitamin and mineral categories that have been found to be beneficial to our skin health and I will explain how best to add them to your plate!
References:
Meyer, K., Kushi, L., Jacobs, D., Slavin, J., Sellers, T. and Folsom, A., 2000. Carbohydrates, dietary fiber, and incident type 2 diabetes in older women. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 71(4), pp.921-930.