Glossy hair, strong nails and glowing skin are all signs of a great beauty regime – or is it a great diet? Food contains lots of beauty nutrients which people have used for thousands of years. Today we can wash our hair and moisturise our skin with honey, rosemary, rosehip, avocado or olives, to name a few. A French woman I know attributes her beautiful skin to the olive oil she rubs on her face and hands while cooking.

We can use all these super-foods on the outside but what about the inside? There’s no magic food that will keep us looking forever young but our diet (plus lifestyle and attitude) does affect how your skin looks and ages.

Take these eight food steps to healthy skin, hair and nails. In part 1, I discuss protein and seafood; look for the other six steps in Part 2.

1. Protein – the building blocks

Skin, hair and nails are mostly protein. These proteins – keratin, collagen and elastin – ward off wrinkles and provide strength and elasticity. Most of us eat plenty of protein from meat, chicken, fish, legumes, eggs and dairy foods. But remember the movie ‘The Devil Wears Prada’? Miranda Priestly’s assistant is desperately trying to lose weight and proudly describes her new diet: “Well I don’t eat anything and when I feel like I’m about to faint I eat a cube of cheese!” Chances are she was seriously low on protein and eventually her skin, hair and nails, the parts of the body she most wants to look perfect, will suffer.

If protein is so important, is more better? With serious burns or wounds, the body needs extra protein to repair the damage. And athletes in heavy training have higher protein requirements. But huge steaks and protein shakes don’t build bigger muscles or better skin. If we eat more protein than we need, our body converts it to fat and stores it – usually where we don’t want it!

2. Seafood – essential fat

Our body needs fat. Not the greasy pastry and pie type but the essential omega-3 and omega-6 fats. If you have a dry, itchy scalp or skin you may not be eating enough of these essential fats. They are called ‘essential’ because the body can’t make them – you have to eat them.

Both these fats produce hormone-like substances called prostaglandins which then change into other substances that have immune and inflammatory effects. Omega-3 fats suppress inflammation, immune responses and blood clotting. Omega 6 fats are also essential for healthy skin, but too much causes inflammation and allergic responses. For healthy skin we need a balance of both types of fat. Eating some fish each week, especially oily fish such as salmon, sardines and tuna, increases omega-3’s to give you a good balance.

If you can’t eat fish, try flaxseed. Flaxseed (linseed) oil is a rich source of alpha-linolenic acid – an omega-3 fat which converts, not very efficiently, to EPA and DHA (the best types of omega-3 fats). It’s not as potent as fish oil but if you eat enough of it, it will have the same blood thinning effect as fish oil.

What about fish oil tablets? When I took them regularly I noticed how if I had a cut or scratch it would bleed a lot longer so a word of caution about taking fish oil supplements: if on any type of blood thinning medication such as aspirin. It’s like a double blood thinning effect. If you do take fish oil supplements make sure you stop them at least a week before any surgery or dental treatment where you may bleed.

Studies using large doses (3-4 grams) of fish oil found it improved dermatitis and psoriasis in some, but not all, people. It also helped protect skin against sunburn but was not as effective as sunscreen. What’s interesting is that with these mega-doses of fish oil the higher amounts of omega-3 fats in the skin were prone to oxidation – just like oil going rancid when exposed to light. Therefore, rather than mega-dosing on fish oil tablets, eat a few fish and vegetable meals each week – fish for the fat and vegetables for antioxidants.

Fish is fantastic but there’s no need to give up your steak. In fact if you have spoon shaped nails, you may be iron-deficient– and red meat may be just what your body is missing.

Part 2 of this series is to follow on my next post…

Info and related articles:

• Kids Don’t Get Enough Omega-3 (blisstree.com)
• Omega-3 fatty acids, low glycemic index diet protects against age-related macular degeneration (eye.taragana.net)
• Eating fish, nuts and olive oil may be good for your eyes (eye.taragana.net)
• Omega-3 centre  Australia

My parents came to stay a few weeks ago, bearing bags of kiwifruit from their orchard. “We’ve got so much!” my mum exclaimed as she dumped three or four bulging bags in the front hall. “The fruit shops at home are giving them away.” Her face became more serious, “And the pack house want to pay us to mulch our kiwifruit into the ground. There’s so much around that it’s cheaper to mulch the poorer quality fruit than pick and pack it. They say the orchard manager hasn’t been doing his job properly and the kiwifruit just don’t last well for export. A week later a fierce hail-storm decimated heaps of kiwfruit orchards around Tauranga and Te Puke – an economic disaster for those poor orchardists. Mum phoned me: “They have lost so many orchards that now they want our fruit”.” It was a bitter-sweet moment.

Kiwifruit has been in my mouth and on my mind a lot lately. Green and gold varieties fill my fruit bowl and every day we eat them with breakfast, as snacks, in the lunch-box, and after dinner. Most children I know prefer the gold variety. It has less of that puckered mouth zing to it and they love its sweet flavour and bright colour. If any Kiwi family isn’t eating kiwifruit at the moment they are missing out on a cheap and incredibly healthy food. And because now is kiwifruit season it’s most likely that we are getting the optimum amounts of all the nutritional goodies they contain.

Kiwifruit is one of the most nutrient dense fruits around. That’s why it’s been called a ‘super-fruit’. It’s packed with vitamin C, and the gold ones are also rich in vitamin E. But that’s not all: it has plenty of other phyto (plant) chemicals, especially carotenoids which cause the gorgeous green and gold colours and protect our precious DNA from damaging oxidation.

As kiwifruit ripen, their cell walls (that’s the fibre) swell to three or four times their unripe size. It’s sort of like a sponge full of water and it’s sure to help swish things through. In 2002 around 40 people aged over 60 ate two or three green kiwifruit a day for three weeks to see if it would reduce constipation – a common problem in older people. The study really just confirmed what anyone who’s pigged out on kiwifruit knows: you end up on the toilet and there is definitely no straining!

Both green and gold have plenty of fibre but the green also has an enzyme that stimulates gut motility. Leave some green kiwifruit on your steak for a while and it will soon be as though you had clobbered it with a meat mallet! It’s the same enzyme: it tenderises meat and it gently gets your gut moving.

Green kiwifruit also have lots of fructo-oligosaccharides – called FOS’s for short. These act as a pre-biotic which means they are food for the good bugs already in your gut. It’s sort of like ‘grow-your-own’ bacteria!

I recently chatted to Vital Foods – a New Zealand company that has worked out how to put pure kiwifruit pulp into a pill. It’s sold in chemists as a supplement for gut health, and the studies they have conducted on it have had good results. They have even managed to extract the oil from kiwifruit seeds. Just like flaxseed oil, it’s rich in alpha-linolenic acid which converts to omega-3 fats in the body. Vital Foods say that kiwifruit oil is 65% ALA compared with flaxseed oil’s 55% but there’s just one problem – they can only produce a small amount.

So if you don’t like kiwifruit or think you need a concentrated dose of it, you can try the supplement – Phloe (Info and Reuters 2008 press release here).

Me? I’m off to the fruit shop – Bye!

LINK: http://www.phloe.co.nz/

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• How to Prepare a Kiwi (brighthub.com)

Calcium is essential for young growing bodies and dairy foods (milk, yoghurt and cheese) are the best source of this bone-building nutrient. The NZ Ministry of Health recommends that children under the age of five drink 500ml (about two cups) of milk each day. Make it full-fat milk up until the age of two – they need the extra fat and kilojoules for growth.

If your child isn’t into large glasses of milk, try these calcium-rich food ideas:

• Sprinkle cheese on food
• Turn old bread into Cheese Crispies – slice bread into fingers, thinly spread with Vegemite or Marmite, sprinkle with cheese and bake at 160C for 20 minutes until crisp
• Yoghurt – a handy snack. I buy natural yoghurt and add honey or fruit. Fruit yoghurt often has preservative which I try to steer clear of, especially for little ones. Check the use-by date: the fresher the yoghurt, the more live, healthy bacteria are in it.
• Custard
• Milk puddings
• Rice pudding – turn left-over cooked rice into pudding by adding milk, a sprinkle of brown sugar and some sliced banana. Or beat an egg with 2 tablespoons of sugar and a cup of milk, pour over 1/2 cup of cooked rice and bake at 160C for 20-30 minutes
• Smoothies and milkshakes
• Milk ice-blocks – beat a little sugar and vanilla essence (or Milo) into milk and freeze in ice cube trays with an ice-block stick in each
• Make porridge with milk instead of water
• Make creamy soups with milk (not cream – it doesn’t have much calcium)
• Mashed potato with plenty of milk
• Broccoli or Cauliflower Cheese – Make a quick cheese sauce with milk, cornflour and grated cheese
• Sardines on grainy toast
• Salmon fried rice – make sure you eat the bones!
• Oranges
• Orange almond cake – oranges and almonds provide calcium but not as much as dairy foods
• Calcium enriched soy drink – I like vanilla flavoured So Good
• Play outside in the sun for a while each day. Sunshine stimulates bone-friendly vitamin D, weight-bearing exercise builds bones – and playing is more fun than house-work! Enjoy these bone-building moments with your children.

According to Hippocrates, the father of medicine, the four keys to health are diet, exercise, prayer and massage. When we think of health we usually think only of the first two. But Hippocrates obviously considered prayer and massage equally important as diet and exercise. Have you had a massage this week, this month, this year? I am no expert on massage but I do know that babies and small children who are deprived of touch do not thrive. Why should it be any different for adults? I had a massage on the weekend – my first for a year! I tend to think of them as an indulgence but as the massage therapist re-aligned my out of kilter hips and loosened up the tightly scrunched muscles I wondered whether I could have prevented the stress fracture in my foot if I had only got myself straightened and loosened up a few months sooner.

Over the New Zealand summer and autumn there are lots of triathlons for every level of fitness. The women’s triathlons that I do are fantastic. Around 800 women of every shape and size swim the 300 metres, cycle the 10km and run or walk the 3 km. It’s all about finishing. No-one knows who’s the fastest until you check the results on the web-site the next day. I like to do well so over the past six months I have been swimming, cycling and running quite a lot – and ignoring that crooked feeling as I ran. But it’s all come to a grinding (that’s my hips) halt! I think Hippocrates was right. I was doing the diet and prayer, probably over-doing the exercise, and completely ignoring the massage. Boy, have I paid for it! No running or long walks for three months. My endorphins have dropped and I’m struggling not to be grumpy. Perhaps some prayer, a massage and sipping a latte in the sun with my husband will help!