Eating your sunscreen can be as simple as adding in key antioxidant foods that protect your skin from harmful ultraviolet rays.
The most important category of foods are those high vitamin C, and combining them together can give you the most bang for your buck.
Vitamin C helps us produce collagen. It also helps us balance our energy, adapt to stress, it bolsters our immune system, and of course wards off a sunburn.
Did you know there are five foods with more vitamin C than oranges? One medium-sized orange contains about 83mg of vitamin C so we’ll add oranges as sixth on our list next to these five.
Consume a higher amount of fish oil in the summer to serve as protection for your skin (so maybe 3 pills a day versus 2) or switch to cod liver oil since it’s higher in vitamin D.
Get your blood work checked for vitamin D levels twice annually—once in the summer and once in the winter so that you can target your supplementation of vitamin D specific to your needs.
One tablespoon of coconut oil a day also makes the list (better to ingest it than to try to use it alone as sunscreen, although it will provide some minimal protection when applied topically).
Lycopene is another key antioxidant that helps prevent sunburn. Tomatoes are highest in lycopene, which makes sense since they grow in the hottest temperatures.
As an alternative to eating tomatoes or drinking tomato juice, consume two tablespoons of tomato paste per day (perhaps on avocado toast with basil, salt, and pepper).
While these foods will increase your resistance to the harmful effects of the sun from the inside out, I still recommend using a clean, organic sunscreen daily.
My favorite sunscreen for my face, that I use daily is Beautycounter.
Alba Spray is my favorite for my body since it’s so easy to apply and is in a coconut oil base.
