Eat tomatoes and chocolate

Filed in archive Diet and Nutrition on July 23, 2007

As long as skin is concerned, you can eat only tomatoes and chocolate all summer long. You see, both of these foods contain ingredients which help your skin fight UV rays, stay young and less sunburn prone. Enjoy!

The British have long proven that eating tomatoes and tomato produce gives your skin a great fighting power against sun. BBC reports:

"There is a magical component in tomatoes that research is beginning to show could protect our skin from UV damage from sunburn. It's called lycopene and it is a very effective antioxidant.
We took 23 women who were used to burning merely at the sight of the sun and asked half of them to eat 55g of tomato paste every day for 12 weeks (giving them 16mg of lycopene).
After 12 weeks of rigorously following the tomato paste diet we brought our women back to the lab and burnt them all over again. Was it all in vain? When tested again our volunteers on the lycopene diet had a 30% increase in skin protection."

Lycopene can also be found in watermelons, pink grapefruit, papaya and rosehip. You can find a great variety of lycopene rich recepies on lycopene org, so that you don't get bored adding tomatoes to everything.

The deal with chocolate is much the same, it also has powerful antioxidants in it, called flavanols (you can find the research here). Of course, not all chocolates contain the same amount of flavanols, so be sure to gorge only on dark chocolate for maximum skin benefit.