Beauty and the Feast: How to Get Gorgeous, Smooth Skin from Your Diet

Does your daily regimen include wash, toner and an $80 night cream? That doesn’t mean you’re on track for getting silky, smooth skin. Ingredients in food – including vitamins A, C and E, and less well-known chemicals such as lycopene and linoleic acid – create smooth skin and keep from sagging, fight pimples and rashes, and even offer natural sun protection.

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“Our skin must contend against harsh aspects of the outside world – the sun, microorganisms, and toxins such as air pollutants,” says Wilhelm Stahl, a biochemist at Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf, Germany. “Nutrients from the diet travel to the skin, where they help cells fight off these assaults.”

Here’s what to eat and what to avoid for a complexion and smooth skin that radiate health and beauty.

Starve Acne With Foods You Eat

Doctors recently learned that acne culprits are sweet or starchy foods that are quickly digested, sending a jolt of sugar to the bloodstream. The body responds to the sugar high by making more insulin, which spurs skin glands to ooze their oily stuff. In 2007, an Australian team, led by nutritional biochemist Robyn Smith, became the first to show, in a small group of young men, that eating whole grains, fresh produce and lean meat and fish instead of processed carbs may help alleviate acne and contributes to smooth skin.

Tip: Trade baguettes for multi-grain bread, and pretzels for nuts.

Sunscreen You Swallow Helps Protect Your Skin from Cancer

Why do Italians love their spaghetti marinara? It’s delicious, but it may also shield Mediterraneans from the intensity of the sun’s rays. Eating fruits and vegetables containing vitamins C and E – along with a few other less well-known natural chemicals – reduces one’s susceptibility to sunburn. One of the most effective natural sunscreens is lycopene, which is found in tomatoes, watermelon and pink grapefruit.

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Chemicals in cocoa, called flavanols, as well as polyphenols in green tea also grant UV protection, which leads to smooth skin. All this may sound weird until you consider that plants can’t duck for shade at high noon, so some have developed other protective strategies. Use sunscreen, by all means, but munch on these foods to enhance its benefits.

Tip: Trade diet soda for tomato juice, gummy bears for chocolate with high cocoa content.

Edible Botox To Keep Collagen In Your Skin

The key to looking younger? Skip cigarettes and the sun, and bring on fruits and veggies. Vitamin A – found in carrots, sweet potatoes, spinach and kale – is essential for normal skin-functioning. Vitamin C – found in red and green peppers, citrus fruits and strawberries – helps make collagen, an elastic substance that plumps skin.

A 2007 study of more than 4,000 women (one of the first studies to examine how nutrient intake from foods as opposed to vitamin supplements affects skin) yielded surprising results. Epidemiologist Maeve C. Cosgrove and colleagues found that women who ate foods rich in vitamin C and linoleic acid – found in soybean oil, green leafy vegetables, and nuts – had fewer wrinkles and smoother skin as well as fuller, more youthful complexions.

Tip: Trade doughnuts for walnuts, and breakfast sausage for orange and strawberry slices.

Purge Eczema with Foods Rich in Gamma-Linolenic Acid, GLA

Eczema – a painful, itchy, scaly skin condition – is on the rise. No one knows why, but some doctors believe that an effective treatment includes eating foods rich in gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), a fatty acid found in some seed oils.

In fact, scientists suspect that lower levels of GLA in the blood make it harder for skin to hold on to water, so it becomes drier and eczema-prone. Some studies have shown that ingesting foods containing GLA, such as evening-primrose oil, blackcurrant-seed oil or borage oil, can help. Even consuming modest amounts of hempseed oil (1-2 tablespoons per day) can rid the irritable symptoms of eczema with smooth skin.

Here’s what a conclusion reads of one of the clinical studies:

“Dietary hempseed oil caused significant changes in plasma fatty acid profiles and improved clinical symptoms of atopic dermatitis. It is suggested that these improvements resulted from the balanced and abundant supply of PUFAs in this hempseed oil.” [read it HERE.]

Tip: Supplement a diet rich in fish with evening-primrose, black currant seed, borage or hempseed oil.

Grow Vitamins At Home In A Farmstand Nook

Imagine that you could grow your own vitamins in the comfort of your home. This is something anybody can do these days. Does not matter whether you live in a bustling city or quite countryside. Farmstand can be a super addition to your daily diet rich in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that sustain your youth and beauty.

I have adopted several hydroponic systems into my life. And the latest addition to my green garden inside the home is a robust Lettuce Grow Farmstand Nook. It houses 20 plants, mainly herbs and edible flowers for my daily diet rich in vitamins. Every 3-4 months, these herbs and plants will be rotated with new seedlings to begin a new growth cycle and continuous enjoyment of plant’s nutrition in my daily life.

You can begin exploring a 20-plant growing Farmstand Nook HERE.

Best Herbs Rich in Vitamins A, C, E, K

You may be surprised, but leafy green vegetables, the soft-stemmed herbs, are powerhouses for vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and vitamin K. Check out the herbs you can enjoy for skin health every single day of your life! Better yet, Farmstand Nook and any Farmstand system grows them successfully.

Vitamins A, C, K can be found in Basil, Parsley, Dill, Cilantro, Kale, Collard greens, Sweet red peppers, Swiss chard, Spinach, Romain lettuce.

Vitamin E lives in herbs like Oregano, Clove, Sage, Sweet red peppers, Spinach, Turnip greens.

And these are just a few examples of leafy vegetables that are bursting in other vitamins as well. Plants offer the best solution for all these vitamins to be bioavailable to our skin and body. When these vitamins and minerals are readily absorbed, we gain an optimal amount of them, and plants do it for us.

Adding fresh herbs and edible flowers into your smoothies, salads, entrees and soups would elevate your self-care and well-being status gradually and surely.

Benefits of Growing Herbs with Farmstand

Growing your own food becomes more and more vital and easier at the same time. Hydroponic systems like Farmstand by Lettuce Grow offer a wide variety of growing systems adaptable for any space, inside and outside.

Here are some of my favorite features that come with a Farmstand plant growing system.

– Modular Design – You can begin with a smaller Farmstand unit and grow with your growing needs and tastes for indoor farming. The smallest unit offers 18 pregrown plants to begin with. And you can progress to a medium unit with 24 plants, and then largest unit with 36 plants.

– Strong Seedlings instead of Seeds – Each Farmstand unit comes with pregrown 2-3-week-old seedlings. You actually receive young plants ready to continue their successful growth in your home.

– Safe and Sustainable Gardening – Growing your own plants, herbs, edible flowers offers safe and sustainable food sources for you, your well-being and entire family’s needs. Using water and technologies allows Farmstand units to operate with 98% less water than traditional growing methods. In addition, the seedlings grow in and within the unit made of materials that are FDA food grade, BPA free and CA Prop 65 compliant.

Farmstand systems can house and grow herbs and edible flowers year-round. For bigger, fruit-bearing plants like tomatoes, do explore a Lettuce Grow Farmstand Starter Kit that you can expand as your hydroponic garden grows. Head over for your personal exploration of green farming at home HERE.

Update on Green Leafy Vegetables Growth in Farmstand Nook

After about ten days, my green leafy vegetables have experienced an amazing growth spurt. Just look at the pictures above and compare the same plants you see there with the today’s Farmstand Nook greens. Simply stunning and beautiful.

We have eaten salads with the leaves already. Though the instructions say that the first harvest is usually between 3-6 weeks from the arrival date. I was eating my salad greens after about ten days they’ve been in the Farmstand Nook. Excited about the harvests ahead!