As you probably already know, what you eat has a huge effect on your overall health. If you opt for poor-quality food, such as fast food and processed foods, you’ll more than likely look and feel unhealthy over time.
If you feed your body nourishing foods like vegetables and fruits, however, you’ll enjoy good health and looking and feeling younger in the process as well. To help you get a grip on what to eat and what not to eat, we’ve compiled a list of the bad stuff, especially when it comes to your looks. Let’s take a look at ten things you must avoid eating to look––and feel––younger.
#10 – French Fries
French fries, along with just about anything that is deep-fried in reused or overheated oil, are extremely unhealthy. In addition to the reused oil becoming overcooked and producing toxins, most oils that french fries are cooked in contains a lot of trans fats and free radicals. These are known to cause cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and much more. Of course, they cause your skin to look aged and blemished as well.
#9 – Alcohol
Alcohol, especially red wine, is actually good for you in small amounts. But drink too much of it, and you’ll gradually cause your liver to decline. At a certain point, your liver will have a hard time filtering toxins, causing them to build up in the body. One of these places, of course, include your skin, causing wrinkles, acne, and other skin blemishes.
#8 – Artificial Caramel Coloring
Drinking your cola or root beer may feel like a harmless thing to do, but it’s actually very harmful to your health and skin beyond the sugar content. Artificial caramel coloring, 4-methylimidazole, has been proven to be a cause of inflammation and cancer in more serious cases. Unfortunately, this artificial coloring is found in other unsuspected drinks and foods, such as beer, whiskey, brown bread, and even chocolate. As it destroys your internals, you’ll also start to show signs of poor health on your exterior as well.
#7 – Charred Meat
Some people like their meat well, but cooking your meat too much can actually be quite harmful. Blackened meat contains inflammation-causing hydrocarbons, which damage the collagen in your skin. They also cause cancer, so avoid the chars just to be safe.
#6 – Excessive Salt
In addition to causing a range of health problems such as high blood pressure, salt also causes you to look older and larger than you really are. This is because salt causes you to have a rather puffy look, making you look less toned and more “tired” in appearance.
#5 – Canned Soup
Unless you’re trying to recover from illness, it’s best to stay away from canned soup. Although they may look like a healthy option, most of them are jam-packed with unhealthy ingredients, including sodium. As mentioned above, high levels of sodium can cause you to bloat while also causing your skin to be dehydrated. This causes wrinkles and lines to show more prominently.
#4 – Processed Meat
Hotdogs have long been a summer tradition, but they are probably best kept as a thing of the past. Hotdogs, as well as bacon, sausages, lunch meat, and other processed foods, contain a large number of sulfites and other preservatives. These preservatives cause inflammation in your body and in the skin, which causes blemishes and speeds up the aging process.
#3 – Baked Sweets
Having your favorite sweets is fine if it’s only once in a while. But indulging too much can be really bad for your health and appearance. Not all baked goods have trans fats, but you’d be surprised by just how many of them actually do.
Trans fats are quite harmful for you, increasing the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and also speeding up your skin’s aging process.
#2 – Red Meat
Fatty meat, but especially red meat, produces free radicals in the body. These unstable molecules steal electrons from other healthy cells, thus causing instability in cells that they come into contact with. Having too many free radicals in the body leads your skin to have a harder time protecting itself and generating collagen, leaving it weak and susceptible to disease.
#1 – Energy Drinks
Most energy drinks contain a lot of sugar, processed chemicals, and other unnatural substances. While they do give you energy, they have an aging effect on your teeth and skin, while also promoting other health problems that can arise with excessive consumption.
