What can I eat to make my skin look younger?

It takes more than skin care to look younger -- what you put inside your body is just as important. Add the following four foods to your weekly shopping list to keep your skin youthful for years to come. 

• Yellow peppers for wrinkles: Peppers aren’t just tasty in stir-fries and salads, they’re also great for your skin. Yellow peppers are rich in vitamin C, which helps stop harmful free radicals from damaging your skin.
• Eggs for sagging skin: Studies show that the lean proteins contained in eggs help provide building blocks for collagen, the protein-rich connective tissue that plumps your skin to prevent sagging.
• Whole-grain barley for damaged skin: Whole-grain barley is a good source of selenium, a mineral that helps protect your skin against injury from the sun’s damaging UV rays.
• Salmon for blemishes: Salmon is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to calm the inflammation that makes your skin break out in blemishes. Salmon also contains a chemical called astaxanthin, which gives the fish its pink hue. That chemical can have the same helpful effect on your skin, giving it a youthful appearance.

There's good evidence that midlife women with the most youthful-looking skin (fewer wrinkles, thinning and dryness) also have the most vitamin C in their diets. This makes sense, because vitamin C builds collagen, the support structure that keeps your skin's surface smooth. Young-looking women also tend to eat less fat and fewer carbs and have higher levels of linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid found mainly in nuts and dark leafy greens (think spinach and kale).

Ellagic acid, found primarily in pomegranate and red berries, is another wrinkle fighter. It's recently been credited with fighting aging inflammation from the sun and reducing collagen breakdown.

Here are other foods that will get to your face from your plate:

• egg yolks, avocados, lentils, chickpeas and beans (including soybeans) all fight dryness
• salmon, which contains astaxanthin, a carotenoid that improves skin elasticity
• green tea, which provides antiaging plant polyphenols that may help your skin both when you drink it and when you apply it (some moisturizers contain green tea)