Most of us grew up thinking hydration is just skin deep. You slap some lotion on your chronically dry hands and treat your wrinkles with hydrating creams and moisturizers. If you’re feeling fancy, you might go to your local spa for hydrating facials.
But that’s about it.
At Toups and Co, we’re obviously big fans of a hydrating skincare routine. But even with all the benefits of grass-fed tallow balm, skincare products only go so far.
For glowing and hydrated skin that lasts, you need a holistic and whole-body approach to hydration that isn’t just skin deep.
Enter: Eating your skincare.
In order to have healthy skin, you need to give your body the tools to build healthy skin. This means antioxidants, amino acids, healthy minerals, and vitamins. Applying these nutrients to your skin is great. But eating them is even better.
That’s why we’ve created this guide of healthy foods to hydrate skin—so you can conquer your skincare routine from the inside out.
5 Best Foods to Hydrate Skin
If you’re looking to “glow up” your skin this year, you should care about healthy foods for skin.
Really, if you struggle with chronic dry skin, this could be your body’s signal that something else is wrong, too. The body prioritizes things like organ function, energy production, and hormone balance. For this reason, your skin may be the first place to take a hit when nutrients become depleted.
Beyond targeting skin wellness, our top five foods to hydrate skin can also do a lot for your overall health.
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High-Quality Seafood
If you’re a fan of seafood, you’re in luck. Fish (including salmon, herring, sardines, tuna, mahi mahi, trout, and more) are particularly high in omega-3 fatty acids. Oysters, crab, and mussels can be added to this list, too.
Fatty acids can help build the skin membrane—and even slow aging with anti-inflammatory processes in the cell.
Translation? Fatty acids help hydrate the skin from the inside out. Try to always buy wild-caught fish (or better yet, catch it yourself).
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Mineral-Rich Foods for Dry Skin
Did you know? Symptoms of dry skin can originate from a mineral deficiency. That’s right, your dry hands might not be the result of forgetting a daily dose of lotion.
If you go through bottles of lotion and moisturizer without much improvement, it may be time to consider the elements that build healthy skin: minerals.
To target mineral deficiencies, you have to know what minerals you’re lacking. You can check this through a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA)—or you can focus on adding more mineral-rich foods to your diet to cover all your bases.
Here are some mineral-rich healthy foods for skin:
- Bone broth
- Organ meats like beef liver
- Farm-grown organic veggies
- Cell salts
- Gelatin
- Raw milk and dairy
Pick three of these foods and add them to your diet for a month. Then, reevaluate your chronic dry skin. We bet you’ll see more improvement than you expect.
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Tallow, Lard, and Suet
This may be a hot take, but we believe grass-fed tallow is a superfood. Seriously, tallow is packed full of conjugated fatty acids and oleic fatty acids that help your body absorb other much-needed nutrients (fat-soluble vitamins, for instance).
Tallow and lard were the cooking oils of choice just a few hundred years ago. Even McDonald’s fries used to be made with tallow. Key words, “used to.”
Studies suggest tallow consumption contributes to weight management and increases healthy cholesterol (the kind that boots out bad cholesterol). Grass-fed tallow, lard, and suet contain an array of healthy vitamins and minerals, too.
If you’ve experienced the benefits of tallow for skincare, that should be reason enough to trust it in your diet.
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Organ Meats, Eggs, Nutritional Yeast (Foods Rich in Vitamin B)
Since B vitamins are water soluble, they need to be regularly replenished in the body through a healthy diet. Sadly, this means most of us aren’t getting the optimal dose of B vitamins. Our low-quality soil, highly processed diets, and fortified foods aren’t doing the job.
There are eight different B vitamins—and each of them can contribute to skin health in a different way (with the possible exception of biotin for those who are prone to acne).
B vitamins play an active role in cell growth and regeneration. But they do a lot more for the body, too. When our B vitamins are depleted, our bodies will often prioritize other needs, like metabolism function and energy production, before moisturizing the skin. All the more reason to get ample B vitamins.
We’ve mentioned that fatty acids are essential foods to hydrate skin, and B vitamins actually help us metabolize these fats and use them in the body. Seriously, don’t overlook your B vitamins—they’re the building blocks to hydrated, elastic, and glowing skin.
Here are some B vitamin-rich foods to hydrate skin:
- Organ meats like grass-fed beef liver
- Farm-raised eggs
- Raw milk
- Wild-caught fish
- Legumes
- Nutritional yeast (not fortified)
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Organic Farm-Raised Fruits and Veggies
The reason we encourage farm-raised and organic produce is simple: crop rotation. This simple farming principle involves moving crops around and planting “cover crops” to revive soil after a harvest.
Why does crop rotation matter to your health? Because crop rotation is becoming less and less common in industrial farming. And when you don’t rotate your crops, you get depleted soil.
Depleted soil means depleted produce. Even with a diverse diet of fruits and veggies, it’s difficult to get even half of the vitamin and mineral concentration our ancestors thrived on.
By purchasing organic and farm-raised fruits and veggies, you’re setting yourself up for better nutrient concentrations—which should translate to better skin health.
We believe it’s not just about targeting foods to hydrate skin. It’s about finding high-quality options that actually nourish.
Need some recommendations? These nutrient-dense fruits and veggies are great foods for glowing skin:
- Sweet potatoes
- Kiwi
- Ginger
- Lentils and beans
- Carrots
- Bell peppers
- Avocados
- Cucumber
- Olives
The Nutrients You Apply to Your Skin Aren’t So Different from the Nutrients You Eat for Your Skin
Isn’t it interesting to discover the nutrients we use in skincare products aren’t so different from the ones recommended to “eat your skincare”?
The body knows how to use nutrients, whether they’re applied to the skin or ingested.
This is more evidence that we need to give our bodies the right tools—by consuming and using healthy ingredients, rather than fighting nature with synthetic chemicals.
If you’re looking for more clean skincare options (that work better than the chemical stuff), you’ve come to the right place. We’re committed to supporting your “glow up” journey with skincare options that complement your dietary efforts.