Eating Your Way To A Tan

I think I got my love for orange vegetables from when I was a baby. Sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, if it’s orange I would eat it.   To this day, I can go through a half gallon of carrot juice in about three days and can pretty  much put away a bag of baby carrots in one meal. I often times notice when I’m eating my vegetables that I can develop a tan. My drivers license is proof that you can get a tan through what you eat. My picture looks like I was in Aruba for a week, and really it was the middle of December in Georgia. Not exactly tanning weather.  So how this works is that skin color is produced by one of two skin pigments: melanin or beta carotene. Your skin’s melanin content is partly determined by your genes, but it also increases with sun exposure. When you eat a lot of carotenoid-rich produce  those excess carotenoids are stored in the fat just beneath your skin, where their pigments peek through and give you a healthy glow that mimics a tan. Foods with lots of beta carotene include carrots,sweet potatoes, butternut squash, cantaloupe, and some green leafy veggies. So as the spring season quickly approaches us in the next few weeks, remember to get your tan the safe and healthy way. So eat your vegetables! XOXO, Tara