Foods that are bad for the skin

RICE CAKES
Despite being at the top of most people's diet-inspired grocery lists, rice cakes are actually horrible for your skin. Eating them causes your blood sugar to increase dramatically, which causes wrinkles because "your body metabolizes the simple carbs in the cake the same way it does sugar--by converting them to glucose." After they've been converted, the glucose clings to collagen and damages it.




FROZEN DINNERS
We all have those nights when we get home and just want to pop a frozen meal in the microwave for dinner, but doing that can lead to some serious health consequences. High in sodium, frozen dinners lead to high blood pressure, which has been linked to the formation of wrinkles and age spots.




BACON
Americans love bacon, but it has some pretty serious side effects. Processed meats, including bacon, hot dogs, and pepperoni, are typically very high in saturated fats and contain nitrates, which cause inflammation and lead to wrinkles.




PASTA
Andrea Giancoli, MPH, RD, explains that consuming too much of one type of food can lead to early aging, which often shows in your skin. Eating too many processed carbs, for example, like pasta, can cause the collagen in your skin to be damaged, taking away it's springy quality and resulting in wrinkles.




CUPCAKES
While cupcakes are adorable and delicious (and my favorite dessert), they're pretty awful for you, according to nutritionist Kimberly Snyder. "The typical store bought cupcake is filled with ingredients hazardous to your health. Polyunsaturated fats can cause inflammation and heart disease. Dairy is full of toxic hormones. Wheat is very likely genetically modified and contains gluten, which is very difficult to digest. Sugar has no nutritive value." The last item is the one we're most concerned with, as sugar raises glucose levels in your blood, causing the release of insulin and the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGE's), which damages collagen and causes wrinkles.




ALCOHOL
As much as we try to deny it, we've all heard that alcohol is a natural diuretic. The dehydration caused by drinking alcohol is bad news for your skin, causing wrinkles, fine lines, acne, and rosacea outbreaks. Happy hour isn't looking so happy anymore.




CHIPS
Refined carbs are bad news for your skin and potato chips are filled with 'em. They cause inflammation, which leads to DNA- and collagen-damaging oxidative stress, wrinkles, and aged-appearing skin.




SODA
Drinking soda does bad things to your body, including filling you up with phosphates. Increased levels of phosphates causes early aging and thinning skin. As if that wasn't enough to make you put down the can of Coke, the caramel color used in colas directly leads to wrinkles.




FRENCH FRIES
Alright, we all know that French fries and other fried, fast foods aren't exactly healthy, but that hasn't stopped us from eating them ... until now. When your fries and chicken nuggets are heated to super-high temperatures with oils and fats, free radicals are released. Jolene Hart, author and beauty editor for People, explains that free radicals are "reactive oxygen molecules that steal electrons from healthy molecules in your body, causing cellular damage in the process."




AGAVE
Kimberly Snyder hates agave and if a celebrity nutritionist hates something, we feel like maybe we should do. It's high in fructose (up to 97%!), which causes the formation of AGEs, which causes wrinkles and other aging signs on your skin. According to Snyder, some studies show that fructose leads to up to 10 times more AGEs than other sugars, like glucose.




MARGARINE
Margarine and other butter alternatives are made using partially-hydrogenated oils, otherwise known as trans-fat. Trans-fatty acids leave your skin increasingly vulnerable to UV radiation, which causes damage to the elastin and collagen in your skin, and leads to wrinkles.




COFFEE
Well, this is the worst news ever. Caffeine leads to wrinkles in a pretty sneaky way. If you sip on a cup of jo too late in the day, you'll have trouble sleeping at night; while your sleeping, your skin cells are working hard to repair themselves from UV damage during the day. And it gets worse: if you're drinking iced coffee, the most common way to get your daily caffeine dose during the summer, sipping on the straw is causing fine lines and wrinkles around your mouth, making you appear older.




CITRUS FRUITS
Another sneaky suspect of wrinkles, citrusy fruits, like lemons and oranges, can damage your skin in a pretty scary way. If your skin comes into contact with fresh juice from one of these fruits, exposure to sunlight can cause awful sunburns, which obviously lead to damage and wrinkles. Make sure you wash your hands thoroughly before going outside after eating one of these babies.




FLAVORED YOGURT
Flavored yogurts are one of the sneakiest, most menacing contributors to crazy high sugar levels in adults. When we eat it, the sugars grab on to and break down the amino acids in collagen and elastin, leading to saggy, wrinkly skin.


From: http://www.msn.com/