While many a dietitian espouses the benefits of “eating the rainbow” or filling your diet with a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables to maximize nutrients, some of those same items can paint the palette of your skin.
Load up too much on certain foods and you might notice a startling difference in the mirror.
Read on for the colors your skin can change naturally — and which foods are likely to be the culprit.
Orange
Your skin can take on a pumpkin-like tint when you consume a diet rich in beta-carotene, a natural pigment or carotenoid.
The molecular makeup of beta-carotene absorbs light in the blue spectrum, reflecting orange light to our eyes — a condition called carotenemia.
Beta carotene is present not only in carrots but also in other fruits and vegetables, including sweet potatoes, pumpkins, butternut squash, apricots, cantaloupe, and even some leafy greens like collards and kale.
It’s neither dangerous nor permanent, but it can last several months.
“It usually concentrates first in your palms and the soles of your feet, where the skin is thicker,” Michigan-based plastic surgeon Dr. Anthony Youn explained on TikTok.
It also often presents in babies who are given large amounds of pureed baby food, especially squash.
Though it can resemble jaundice in, it’s easy to distinguish because the sclera — the white part of the eye — remains white.
Apple founder Steve Jobs, who was known to adhere to a carrots-only diet for weeks on end, is said to have sometimes taken on a sunset hue.
Red
Lycopene — a natural plant extract that gives color to red and pink fruits and vegetables likw tomatoes, watermelons, and papayas — can build up in the stratum corneum, the layer of your skin that has a high fat content, causing it to take on a deeper, orange-red sunset hue, known as lycopenemia.
While it can develop anywhere on the body, lycopenemia typically causes a color change in the palms of the hands, soles of the feet, and/or the lines running from the nose to the mouth. It may appear evenly or in blotchy spots or patches.
Like carotenemia, the effects of lycopenemia are temporary and typically recede when lycopene consumption is reduced.
In addition to skin changes, excess lycopene can lead to nausea, diarrhea and other gastrointestinal issues.
Healthy adults should be able to consume up to 75 mg of lycopene per day without getting a reaction.
And consume we should, as studies have shown that in moderation, lycopene may ease depression symptoms by enhancing brain cell communication.
Sun-dried tomatoes boast the highest lycopene concentration among tomato products, with 45.9 milligrams per 100 grams.
Yellow
Dark, leafy green vegetables like spinach and kale contain yellow pigment carotenoids such as lutein and zeaxanthin, which can give skin a yellow tint.
All the hue, none of the skin changes
Meanwhile, other dietary pigments — including anthocyanins, betalains and chlorophyll — offer health benefits but rarely leave a color mark.
Anthocyanins, which give berries, red cabbage, and purple carrots their deep hues, are water-soluble, meaning they are metabolized before they can visibly affect skin tone.
Likewise, betalains, responsible for the rich reds and yellows in foods like beets, prickly pear and amaranth, are excreted by the body before they can color the complexion. While excess consumption of these foods won’t present in the skin, it can cause urinary and fecal color changes.
And it turns out we’re not the only creatures that can get skin color from carotenoids: goldfinches, flamingoes, salmon and canaries also reflect the colors they consume.
