12 Of The Best Ingredients For Your Skin And How To Eat More Of Them

Cha-cha-cha chia! These tiny seeds are loaded with omega-3 fatty acids that keep your skin nice and hydrated. Chia seeds offer many additional health benefits — such as keeping your heart healthy and aiding in weight loss — when eaten alongside other plant-based fats and fiber.

If you're looking for something that will help keep your skin stay firm, eat more eggs. The protein-rich food is loaded with collagen-boosting amino acids lysine and proline, as well as vitamin B12, which may help fight dark spots.

If you haven't started drinking green tea yet, now's the time. It's got catechins — a type of antioxidant — that help with everything from protecting your skin from free radicals and sun damage to reducing inflammation. Another perk? You could see an improvement in skin firmness, too.

The good fat in coconut helps fill cracks in your skin's surface and fight wrinkles, giving you a healthy, youthful complexion. Have a skin condition like eczema? Good news: Products with coconut oil are extra soothing for irritation.

We get it — dark leafy greens aren't the most delicious of veggies, but they do boast some major skin benefits. Carotenoids, the phytonutrients in dark leafy greens, can help keep your skin firm and give you a nice glow. If you have trouble eating spinach or kale solo, try throwing them into an omelet, blending them into a smoothie, or baking them into chips.

As long as it's made of 70 percent cocoa or higher, chocolate's full of skin-benefiting goodness. The flavonoids in dark chocolate boost blood flow in the top layer — aka your epidermis — which provides more oxygen, minerals, and vitamins to the area and helps your body produce vibrant new skin cells.

Want to minimize the appearance of your wrinkles? Try eating more soy. Isoflavones — which are in everything from tofu and milk to healthy snacks like edamame — help your skin retain water. This helps to eliminate the dryness responsible for those pesky fine lines.

This bright red and juicy fruit always has an enviable glow. The good news is eating more tomatoes can actually give you a healthy flush, too, thanks to lycopene, a plant pigment that can also help protect your skin from sunburn and stimulate collagen production.

Pomegranate seeds might be tiny, but they can do big things for your skin. They're packed with vitamin C, which can help turn a dry complexion into a glowing one by getting rid of dead skin cells and giving new cells the chance to shine. The antioxidants in pomegranates also help fight off wrinkles and dark spots. Eat up!

We all know the endless benefits of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs). Eating avocados — yes, even when they're mashed into to-die-for guac — has some major wrinkle-fighting benefits by keeping skin hydrated and boosting collagen production. Avoiding fine lines has never been tastier.

Bacteria aren't always bad — especially when they're in yogurt. The active cultures in many yogurt products (pro tip: look for the "Live & Active Culture (LAC)" seal to make sure you're getting the good stuff) not only help keep bad bacteria at bay so your digestive system can function properly, they also give your immune system a boost, which helps minimize stress-related breakouts and other skin irritations.

Good news, berry lovers: Anthocyanin, which gives blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries their pretty hues, can help protect your skin from free radicals and reduce signs of aging, according to Stephanie Middleberg, RD.