Fruit and vegetables are not only nutritious but could also make you “cuter”, according to the Daily Mail. Apparently, eating more foods such as carrots, broccoli, squash and spinach enhances attractiveness and gives the skin a healthy glow within six weeks.
These rather fruity claims are based on a small experimental study that investigated whether people could improve their complexion by eating the yellow-red carotenoid pigments found in many fruits and vegetables. In the first phase of the study, 35 people completed dietary questionnaires and had their skin colour recorded over a six-week period. The researchers found that a modest increase in self-reported fruit and vegetable consumption over the period was related to an increase in skin colouration (yellowness and redness). In the second part of the study, the researchers enrolled 24 young students and asked for their subjective opinions of the attractiveness of computer-created, colour-manipulated images, which the researchers said reflected different degrees of fruit and vegetable consumption.
No conclusions can be drawn from this small, short study, which has numerous limitations. To more reliably assess whether fruit and vegetable consumption caused skin colour change, the researchers could have performed a trial asking people to eat different diets and looked at the results it had. Also, the researchers did not account for other factors that might affect complexion, such as exposure to daylight and exercise, and can provide no evidence that the diet caused the observed skin colour over the short six-week period. In the second part of the study, the subjective opinions of 24 people cannot be interpreted as a universal measure of attractiveness.
Regardless of whether or not fruit and vegetables have a beneficial effect on the complexion, a healthy, balanced diet has many other known health benefits.
