So many things get sold as anti-aging these days. Whether it’s collagen, elastin, some fruit you’ve never heard of, red lights etc. The list goes on and on. The truth is, very few things have actually been tested on human faces.
And people spend so much money on trying to look better and/or younger. Let’s not forget botox and face lifts that have become much more acceptable these days. But very few people talk about what you eat as a way of keeping yourself young and fresh faced.
Healthy foods make sense to be part of the anti aging conversation (which reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer starts smoking cigars and his face ends up looking like a “catcher’s mitt.”)
Lifestyle choices can have a big impact on how you look!
Skincare gets most of the anti-aging attention, but dermatologists keep pointing at the plate. “Don’t underestimate the power of a reasonable diet and balanced nutrition as a measure for preventing aging and prolonging one’s life,” says board-certified dermatologist Andrea Suarez, MD, who puts it more bluntly elsewhere: “When you have a crappy diet, it shows up on your face.”
The one caveat about the list below, there’s not a ton of research on how food affects your face. It doesn’t mean that there’s zero, but there isn’t reams of clinical trial data. In short, the science behind how food can impact your face really comes down to sugar.
Sugar attaches itself to the collagen and elastin in your skin and ends up essentially breaking them down. And the more collagen and elastin you have the better you’ll look. So eating foods that help with blood sugar not only help with things like diabetes, but can make you look younger, too.
The Food That Ages Skin Fastest: Sugar
As much as it tastes great, and makes everything it touches taste even better, sugar is bad for your skin. There’s no doubt about it. And it’s bad for a lot of other parts of your body.
But specifically for your skin, sugar intake creates a process called glycation. And glycation is when sugar grabs the good stuff in your skin (collagen, elastin etc) and basically starts to kill it. This is why high-glycemic foods can cause a wide range of skin issues.
While it tastes great (and let’s not kid ourselves, we need to treat ourselves from time to time) sugar takes things away in your body. It makes a lot of things work harder and that can have an effect.
“If you eat or drink too many refined carbs and sugars, it can lead to a process called glycation in the skin,” says dermatologist Whitney Bowe, MD. “Glycation is when sugar attaches to proteins in the skin like collagen and elastin, and targets them for destruction.”
NYC dermatologist Joshua Zeichner, MD, names the usual culprits: “Refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, are one of the biggest contributors to glycation, a process where sugar attaches to collagen.” And dermatologist Debra Jaliman, MD, keeps it short: “High-glycemic foods are known to cause acne and wrinkles.”
10. Beans
Beans are so good for you, they should be on nearly every one of your plates. They offer so much (and they are great for the environment to boot.) But when it comes to your skin, they really provide the building blocks for the things your body needs to give your skin everything it wants.
“Beans are a plant-based source of lysine, proline, and glycine, three amino acids that are key for collagen synthesis,” says Razan Hallak, MS, RDN, and as dietitian Jessica Zinn, MS, RD, explains, “your body uses these amino acids to form the long chains that create collagen’s triple-helix structure, supporting skin elasticity and connective tissue strength.”
The thing about beans is that the more you eat of them, the less you are likely to eat of unhealthy stuff. And they are great for blood sugar spikes that increasing beans should decrease blood sugar spikes, which will have an impact on your collagen and elastin.
9. Berries
Berries are another food that is great for you. There is a small study on rats (not humans) that showed an increase in the rats collagen and elastin. (Those rats looked great at the end of that study lol.)
But here’s the thing. Small studies like this become the start of huge marketing campaigns claiming berries make you look younger. None of that is proven right now. But should you eat more berries?
Yes. Plus, berries pull double duty: “Berries contain antioxidants, which can help preserve the collagen already in the skin,” says Diana Guevara, MPH, RD.
8. Salmon
Salmon and other fatty fish are another one of those anti-aging adjacent foods. Omegas-3s are great for inflammation and helping your skin put up a healthy moisture barrier against bad stuff. But no one has tested whether it reduces wrinkles.
So anyone who claims that fatty fish will decrease wrinkles is lying. But having said that, the omega-3s in fatty fish do some things that can help your skin. Also, they are really good for you.
So why not have more salmon? Dietitian Samantha DeVito, MS, RD, notes it’s “rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce inflammation and can support the skin’s moisture barrier.”
Source: Potential Uses of Omega-3 Fatty Acids in Dermatology: A Review, 2020
7. Citrus
The science here is also similar to salmon. Vitamin C is good for collagen. it’s one of the things that helps it create good collagen (not defective collagen.) The difference here is that “your body can’t do this” vs “it will make you look younger” are two different things.
And while it’s a good idea to give your body the tools to make more good collagen, there’s no guarantee that it will remove wrinkles. “Citrus fruits are generally rich in vitamin C, which is an essential cofactor for collagen production,” says registered dietitian Maxine Yeung, MS, RD. “Without enough vitamin C, the body does not produce the type of collagen needed to support healthy connective tissue.”
Source: The Roles of Vitamin C in Skin Health, Nutrients 2017
6. Olive Oil
The largest, and weakest, of all the studies was conducted by French researchers. They followed 1,264 women and 1,655 men (ages 45-60), asking them to keep food diaries for at least 10 days over two and a half years. Trained examiners then rated the degree of photoaging on participants’ faces using a six-grade photo scale.
The researchers found that those whose intake of monounsaturated fats came mostly from olive oil were less likely to be classified as severely photoaged, and this was true for men and women. But those who got their monounsaturated fats from meats, dairy or processed meats weren’t protected. Same type of fat, different source, no effect. So it wasn’t the fat that protected the women and men, it was something specific about olive oil, or something about the people who cook with olive oil.
That’s the problem with this study. It’s an observational study, not an experiment. Nobody was asked to use/not use olive oil, so it’s impossible to draw any causal conclusions. People who use a lot of olive oil may also eat a lot of vegetables, and less of the other stuff on this list that wrecks your skin. (For what it’s worth, three of the authors of this study are affiliated with the skin research center of the cosmetics company Chanel.) Still, it’s another reason to cook with olive oil, which you probably should be doing anyway.
Source: Dietary monounsaturated fatty acids intake and risk of skin photoaging, PLoS One 2012
5. Tomato Paste
Collagen is one of the proteins that keeps skin supple. As we age, collagen production slows down, which contributes to wrinkles. One enzyme that breaks down collagen is known as MMP-1. British researchers ran a controlled trial on 20 fair-skinned women (median age 33) to see if eating 55 grams of tomato paste mixed into olive oil daily could reduce skin damage caused by UV light (as compared to eating just olive oil daily).
That daily dose of paste carried roughly 16 milligrams of lycopene, the red pigment in tomatoes that does the heavy lifting here. After 12 weeks the researchers gave the women sunlamp treatment and found that in the women who’d eaten tomato paste, it took more UV light to redden their skin. These women also showed less MMP-1 after sun exposure (which means less collagen breakdown) and showed more new collagen being laid down. All in all, tomato paste looks like one of the better foods for preventing wrinkles, better than most of the internet’s favorite anti-aging foods, in fact.
But there’s a catch: the researchers did not test wrinkles or take tissue samples from the women’s faces. They took tissue samples from the women’s buttocks, which makes sense for measuring sun damage in places that are typically out of the sun, but isn’t all that useful for measuring wrinkles. Still, tomato paste slowed the process that leads to wrinkles, in a three-month study of 20 people. That is a genuinely good result. It is not the same as fewer wrinkles, and nobody has shown that yet.
4. Soy
Soy earns a spot on this list because someone actually studied its effects on wrinkles. Researchers in Japan conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled study in which 26 women in their late thirties and early forties were given soy isoflavones (40 milligrams per day) or a placebo for 12 weeks.
The soy isoflavones were in the form the body can absorb most easily, in a prepared food, not a block of tofu. After eight weeks, the researchers found that the skin on the cheeks of the women who had been taking soy was measurably more elastic than the skin of the women who had been taking the placebo.
After 12 weeks, the researchers photographed the women’s faces and found that the fine wrinkles at the outer corners of the eyes had also improved, to a statistically significant degree, in the soy group. This study was small (only 26 women) and short (12 weeks), but soy isoflavones didn’t cause any negative side effects and showed real promise in improving skin quality. Whether you get the same results by munching down on a plate of edamame instead of taking a supplement remains to be seen, but it is unlikely to hurt, and the protein that soy delivers is good for your skin either way, as collagen requires protein to form.
3. Mango
Researchers at UC Davis enrolled 36 fair-skinned postmenopausal women, and thirty-two finished the trial. It’s a pilot study, and there was no no-mango control group (it’s a high-dose vs. low-dose comparison, not a fruit vs. nothing study).
But it measured actual faces, and it’s the only study I know of that shows a dose at which the effect on wrinkles flips from positive to negative. The women in the trial were all postmenopausal, all fair skinned, and about 60 years old, on average. They ate either half a cup (85 grams) or a cup and a half (250 grams) of frozen Ataulfo mango four times a week for 16 weeks. After eight weeks, the women who ate half a cup of mango had measurably less severe deep wrinkles than before.
After 16 weeks, their deep wrinkles were still measurably less severe. The women who ate a cup and a half of mango four times a week saw their deep wrinkles get measurably worse by week 16. So did the severity of their fine wrinkles and emerging wrinkles, and the total length of their wrinkles. The UC Davis researchers speculate that it might have been the sugar in the mangoes that caused the increased wrinkling in the group that ate more of them, and that jibes with the stuff at the top of this article about glycation. The trial was funded in part by the National Mango Board, which also provided the mangoes used in the study, although it didn’t have any input into the design or analysis of the trial.
2. Cocoa
Cocoa is the only food here besides almonds with a long, properly blinded trial where the main thing being measured was wrinkles. In a 24-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of Korean women aged 43 to 86 who already showed some wrinkling from sun exposure, skin roughness increased 8.7 percentage points less among those assigned to receive a beverage containing 320 milligrams of cocoa flavanols per day compared with the identical-tasting placebo beverage, and elasticity increased by around nine points at both the twelve-week and twenty-four-week checks.
Skin hydration did not change, so this doesn’t appear to be a moisturizing effect. In an even earlier German study, 12 weeks of high-flavanol cocoa was found to reduce UV-induced redness by a quarter and also reduced scaling and roughness.
But just to be clear, this is talking about a specially prepared high-flavanol cocoa, because the flavanols in cocoa are destroyed during processing, so unfortunately, that Hershey bar you had for dessert isn’t likely going to have any effect on your skin (unsweetened cocoa powder and very dark chocolate retain more flavanols, but no one has yet looked at whether eating, say, 85 percent chocolate daily has any effect on your face). What has been shown to work is the flavanol, not the chocolate.
Source: Cocoa Flavanol Supplementation Influences Skin Conditions of Photo-Aged Women: A 24-Week Double-Blind, Randomized, Controlled Trial, J Nutr 2016 · Long-term ingestion of high flavanol cocoa provides photoprotection against UV-induced erythema and improves skin condition in women, J Nutr 2006
1. Almonds
So almonds have actual data that shows they have a direct link to helping remove wrinkles. With one caveat. The controlled trial that showed they removed wrinkles was funded by…you guessed it…the California Almond Board.
So take that for what it’s worth. “Almonds are actually rich in vitamin E. It incorporates into the lipid membranes around skin cells and sits there ready to fight off those reactive oxygen species that would otherwise damage lipids,” Dr. Suarez says, pointing to a controlled trial where “photographic evaluation of their wrinkles showed there was a nine percent decrease in wrinkles compared to baseline in the group getting almonds.”
Source: Prospective RCT on the Effects of Almonds on Facial Wrinkles and Pigmentation, Nutrients 2021
How This List Was Ranked
I want to be clear about one thing here: the order in which these appear is not an accident. Nor is it the order you’d get if you asked a supplement company to put together a list of foods good for your skin. The ones near the top have one thing in common: There was a trial in which real people were fed the food (or the compound extracted from it), and wrinkles were counted before and after. That’s it. That’s the bar. Almonds passed that test twice. So did cocoa (over six months, against a placebo). So did mango, in a pilot trial (although the higher dose backfired).
The ones in the middle had trials that measured something adjacent. Tomato paste shielded skin from the sort of damage that leads to wrinkles, but in an area no one sees. Soy reduced fine lines, but as a concentrated supplement rather than as food. These are encouraging findings, and they are a step short.
The ones at the bottom are probably good for your skin too, but haven’t been tested that way. There’s a survey for olive oil. Citrus and salmon have mechanisms and lab studies. Berries have rats. Beans have logic. I’m not saying these foods aren’t good for you. I’m saying that they aren’t proven to be good for your skin, and in this context that’s a big deal.
The Ten, Ranked by Evidence
| # | Food | What the evidence is | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Almonds | Two RCTs measuring facial wrinkles | study |
| 2 | Cocoa | 24-week placebo-controlled RCT; roughness and elasticity | study |
| 3 | Mango | Pilot RCT measuring facial wrinkles; no no-mango group | study |
| 4 | Soy | Small placebo-controlled RCT; fine lines, as a supplement | study |
| 5 | Tomato paste | RCT; sun-damage markers, not wrinkles | study |
| 6 | Olive oil | Large cross-sectional survey; association only | study |
| 7 | Citrus | Required cofactor; no wrinkle trial | study |
| 8 | Salmon | Reviews; no wrinkle outcome | study |
| 9 | Berries | Cells and rats, not people | study |
| 10 | Beans | Mechanism only; no trial | — |
The Bottom Line
After doing the research, what we’ve learned is that good food more often than not can provide your body with the building blocks of helping with wrinkles. There’s not enough data out there to prove a “eat this and then you’ll have no more wrinkles” theory.
But we do recommend eating more of the foods above to give your body the best chance to look its best. Plus they’re all good for you, which will help other parts of your body.
“There isn’t some glamorous single-product game-changer when it comes to boosting collagen,” says Maddie Pasquariello, MS, RD. “It’s all about the larger picture of your diet.” Or, as Yeung sums it up: “You can support your body’s natural collagen production by eating a variety of nutrient-dense foods, getting enough protein and including fruits and vegetables high in vitamin C.”
Cory Jones has spent 20 years in media and publishing and now leads the data and editorial operation behind The Greenest.
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