Thanksgiving Feast Can Make You More Attractive

Thanksgiving dinner is just around the corner and with it comes extra portions of carrots, sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin pie. This feast might fill your heart with dread about the potential effects on your waistline, but believe it or not, this may be an opportunity for you to become more attractive.

Research has shown that eating certain fruits and vegetables changes your skin tone and makes you look healthier and more attractive. In fact, the effect is more reliable than a tan. Becoming more attractive in this way is surprisingly achievable; it only takes an increase of about 2 portions of fruits or vegetables each day and the results are noticeable after six weeks. Men and women of all skin types (Caucasians, Asians, Blacks) can improve their sex appeal in this way.

How Do We Know This?
We have known for some time that eating foods high in carotenoids - found in certain fruits and vegetables - gives the skin a yellowish tinge. That gave a group of researchers at the University of St Andrews in Scotland the idea to investigate whether this colour change is a good thing. They took pictures of people and used a software to make their skin more yellow or less yellow – in effect matching the skin tone to that of people who consume more or less fruits and veggies. They then asked a group of volunteers to compare the pictures and identify the skin tone for each person that made them look healthiest and most attractive. The results showed that people were deemed healthiest and sexiest when the skin tone was more yellow, by an amount that corresponds to the consumption of about 2-3 additional portions of fruits and vegetables each day.  

Why is Yellow Skin More Attractive?

It might seem bizarre that yellower skin is perceived as more attractive, but it actually makes sense in the context of animal studies. In some bird and fish species, carotenoids are important for health. They must be obtained in the diet but they can be hard to come by. When animals are infested by parasites or infections, they use their scarce carotenoid resources to combat infection and have little left-over to spare. Those that are healthy tend to have more carotenoids and they display them in richly colored ornamentations – bright beaks and feathers and scales (for example, the red feathers of cardinals and the bright beak of bald eagles). In effect, they are telling potential mates “I am rich with food resources and I am healthy.” Males who are brightly coloured attract more females, who prefer them to the less coloured males. Inspired by wildlife, some researchers believe that this is happening in humans as well. Humans need carotenoids in order to fight-off infections. Carotenoids are also important to ensure good health. Deficiencies have been linked to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and even some cancers. Carotenoids have even been proposed to protect the skin from the damages of UV light. Men and women who have good levels of carotenoids have yellower skin, and the hypothesis proposes that we have evolved to prefer people who advertise their good health in this way. We find people with “tanned” skin sexier.  

Where to Get Carotenoids
So what can you do to get more attractive-looking skin? Humans and other animals cannot make their own carotenoids; they must consume them in their foods. Carotenoids can only be found in plants – fruits and vegetables – but not all plants contain them in abundant amounts. A good rule of thumb is that orange, yellow, or red fruits or veggies contain lots of them, though some dark green ones do so as well. Excellent sources include sweet potato, carrot, pumpkin, spinach, collards, kale, apricots, cantaloupe, and tomatoes. The foods can be eaten raw, boiled, baked, or fried, but contact with air should be minimized (cutting the fruit prior to eating or eating it from a recently opened can or frozen container). Supplements can cause the skin to yellow but don’t bring the same beneficial health effects as whole foods. Once ingested, the carotenoids are absorbed in the blood and make their way to the skin and fats. It takes about six weeks for carotenoids to accumulate and infuse all of the skin layers.

Despite recommendations to eat 5-7 servings of fruits and veggies every day, more than half of us do not get enough. Adding portions of these food groups to your diet is beneficial for health, will likely decrease the consumption of less healthy foods, and will cause the skin to take on a healthier glow. All it takes is an increase of two servings each day to make a difference in the skin tone, and people who currently eat the least amount of carotenoid-containing foods should see the greatest effect. If Thanksgiving marks the start of this new diet, you should have more attractive skin by the New Year.

Who knew that the start of the holiday season this week could mark the start of a new beauty regime, one that can cause noticeable improvement in your attractiveness in a matter of weeks! So go ahead, eat that extra serving of pumpkin pie!  

Additional Readings

Whitehead RD, Ozakinci G, Perrett DI (2012). Attractive skin coloration: Harnessing sexual selection to improve diet and health. Evol Psychol 10(5): 842-854. PMID: 23253790

Whitehead RD,Re D, Xiao D, Ozakinci G, Perrett DI (2012). You are what you eat: within-subject increases in fruit and vegetable consumption confer beneficial skin-color changes. PLOS One 7(3): e32988. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032988. PMID: 22412966

Photo Credits

Pumpkin Pie

License image obtained from Flick User: browniesfordinner (Pimpkin Piefrom a *real* pumpkin).

Eagle with yellow beak

License image obtained from Flick User: Pen Waggener (Eagle Closeup).