The glowing skin grocery list

Your skin is the last thing to get fed. Everything else in your body takes what it needs first, which is why a rough week shows up on your face a fortnight later rather than the next morning.

So this is not a meal plan. It is a list. Put some of it in the basket on Sunday and stop thinking about it.

Protein, because skin is mostly built from it

Eggs, salmon, greek yoghurt, chicken. Collagen is protein. If you are not eating enough of it, your body is not going to spend what it has on your face.

Salmon is the one worth going out of your way for. Oily fish carries omega 3, which is what keeps the skin barrier holding water instead of letting it go.

Colour, because that is where the vitamin C lives

Red peppers, oranges, strawberries, blueberries. Vitamin C is what your body needs to make collagen at all. Red peppers have more of it than oranges, which nobody ever believes.

The dark berries are there for the antioxidants, which is the least glamorous word in wellness and the one that actually matters.

Green, every day if you can

Spinach, kale, rocket. Vitamin A, folate, and iron. Iron is worth saying out loud: if you are low, your skin goes dull and grey before anything else gives it away, and a lot of us are low.

Fat, the good kind

Avocado, olive oil, pumpkin seeds, chia. Vitamin E, and more of the fats that keep the barrier working. Pumpkin seeds are the cheapest zinc you can buy, and zinc is the one most associated with calmer, less angry skin.

Brazil nuts if you remember. Two is plenty, they are very high in selenium.

The slow carbohydrate

Sweet potato, quinoa. Steadier blood sugar means fewer of the spikes that show up as oil and breakouts. This is the least exciting item on the list and probably the most useful.

What this will not do

None of this is a cure. Nothing you eat is going to clear acne on its own, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

What it will do is stop you working against yourself, which is most of it. The rest is the boring part: sleep, water, and drying a clean face on something clean.

Elle x