Study Says That Eating Carrots Makes You More Attractive!

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Eating carrots makes you more attractive to others according to a new British study.

Researchers at St Andrews and Bristol universities studied the relationship between skin color and attractiveness, and found that people with a yellow skin hue were perceived as particularly healthy and attractive, and people were drawn to them more. 

They also established for the first time that yellow pigments, or carotenoids, from certain strong colored fruit and vegetables, such as carrots and plums, played a key role in producing yellowness in skin. Men and women both identified a certain 'golden glow' as the most desirable complexion but the tone they preferred was the hue created by eating lots of fruit and veg' - and not the suntanned look.

Take note that people of any race who eat a diet rich in carotenoids tend to have yellower hues.

As part of the study, 40 volunteers rated 51 faces for healthiness and attractiveness. The results will be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior in March.
 

Ian Stephen, one of the scientists involved in the project, said the link between yellowness and carotenoids opened up new strategies for encouraging people to eat more fruit and vegetables, especially as it took just two months of increased consumption to produce visible results in the beauty of the skin.

He said, “Telling people they might have a heart attack in 40 years’ time if they don’t eat more healthily is one thing. What we can do is say, ‘This is what you could look like in a couple of months if you increased your fruit and veg intake’.”

A previous study found the same thing, although specifically related to the attractiveness of men. The study concluded that a healthy glow in men is more attractive to women than a strong, masculine face. In the photo above, the man at the right with the yellower skin is more attractive to women, than the man at the left. 

Unexpectedly, the women in the study showed no preference for men with traditionally masculine features, such as a prominent jaw and high muscle mass, the researchers say.

"What we found is—to our surprise—when you measure masculinity, it doesn't bear any relation to attractiveness at all," coauthor Ian Penton-Voak, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in the U.K., said.
The discovery flies in the face of previous research that suggested women are drawn to men with masculine traits, which have been associated with longer-term qualities including disease resistance and healthier offspring.

What foods provide carotenoids?

The orange-colored fruits and vegetables including carrots, apricots, mangoes, squash, and sweet potatoes contain significant amounts of beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, and beta-cryptoxanthin.

 

Green vegetables, especially spinach, kale, and collard greens, also contain beta-carotene, and are the best sources of lutein.
Lycopene is found in tomatoes, guava, and pink grapefruit.

Spices are a great choice for upping your carotenoid intake. Cayenne pepper and chili pepper are worthy of special mention here.

Spirulina and chlorella are also loaded with carotenoids.