Your Skin Shows What You Eat: 5 Foods That Cause Skin Aging

Every morsel that you put in your mouth becomes a part of you and for better or worse, it makes you who you are. Eating healthy foods keeps your skin fresh, aglow and youthful whereas bad foods contribute towards skin aging.

While indulging in culinary pleasures doesn’t make wrinkles and lines pop up on your skin within a few days, chronic consumption of low-quality foods can have a detrimental effect on your skin besides posing other health risks. Compiled below is a list of five foods that accelerate the process of aging and their long-term consumption must be avoided.

1. Sweets

Eating too many sweets directly contributes towards aging of skin. The concept behind it is quite simple. Excess sugar, which is left over after being utilized for energy consumption, combines with proteins to form substances known as "advanced glycation end products". These products cause intense damage to collagen, the basic structural component of skin, making the skin lose its vigor and youthful radiance.

2. Alcohol

Consumption of excess amounts of alcohol indirectly makes your skin age prematurely. Alcohol damages the liver, the most important organ responsible for removal of toxins and chemicals accumulated within the body. As a result, the toxins build up causing skin breakouts, abnormal skin pigmentation, sallowness and wrinkles which make you look older than you actually are.

3. Salty Foods

Salt lurks in the most unlikely of foods and even though your intake of table salt is low, the ingestion of salt from various salty foods, like canned foods, causes the level of salt in your body to build up. Salt retention within the skin cells causes water to accumulate too, resulting in a puffy appearance that makes you look positively ancient.

4. Processed Meats

Processed meats add a delectable delight to your daily dietary regime. What you don’t know is that prolonged intake of processed meats like sausages, deli meat and bacon etc., cause your skin to mature at an alarming rate. The basic reason why the processed meats harm the skin is that they contain various preservatives including sulfites. These chemicals trigger inflammatory processes within the skin with resultant destruction of the collagen fibers forming the skin. As a result, your skin starts showing the signs of aging like wrinkles.

5. Caffeinated Drinks

Like it or not, the caffeinated drinks that give you an instant energy boost and help you get through the day, are making you age prematurely. Being a diuretic, caffeine strips the body cells of their moisture (mouth goes dry after having tea or coffee, yeah?). Dehydration caused by caffeine affects the skin cells too. The result is abnormally dry skin with reduced elasticity and laxity which is prone to lines and wrinkle formation.

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Eating fresh fruits and vegetables and drinking plenty of water keep your skin young, healthy and lustrous and are your best shields against dry, dull skin which makes you look older than your years. Making healthy choices can make your skin retain its vitality and make you look younger.