Sara Waxman, OOnt, is an award-winning restaurant critic, best-selling cookbook…
What you feed your body also feeds each of the 150,000 hair follicles on your head. Since so many people are looking to make their hair more luscious, there are various ways you can achieve this goal. Try these top 8 healthy hair foods that tells everyone you’re as young as you feel — or even younger:
Green Tea, Walnuts, and Salmon
The polyphenols and omega-3s in these foods are good for more than your heart and brain. They also help make your hair shiny. (If you’re fighting dandruff, try rinsing with green tea. It helps prevent dandruff-causing fungus.)
Bright Coloured Fruit
Brightly colored fruit, such as peaches, strawberries, mango, kiwi, and tomatoes (yep, they’re a fruit!) are rich in vitamin C, which is essential for making collagen that gives structure to your hair. Vitamin C firms skin, too.
Beans, Whole grains, and Other Healthful B-rich Foods
B vitamins (especially vitamin B6 and folic acid) ensure a good supply of blood and oxygen to your hair follicles, which encourages growth and may slow hair loss. Other B-rich foods include beans, peas, carrots, cauliflower, soybeans, nuts, and eggs.
Dark Green Veggies
Think spinach, broccoli, and Swiss chard. They’re great sources of vitamins A and C, which help produce sebum, the scalp oil that’s a natural hair conditioner.
Dark Sesame Seeds
Many Chinese people swear that this food item keeps a man’s hair darker longer.
Say Yes to Avocados
Avocados and avocado oil may prevent dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which kills hair follicles, from getting where it needs to go.
What food should you skip for healthy hair?
Pass on animal fat (the kind in red meat), especially if you’re losing hair. Animal fat can lead to more DHT production and hair-follicle damage. DHT shrinks hair follicles in men who are genetically predisposed to hair loss.
Being Aware of Healthy Hair Foods
Now that you know what all the healthy hair foods are, be sure to feed your body what it needs. That way, you can feed those hair follicles.
Sara Waxman, OOnt, is an award-winning restaurant critic, best-selling cookbook author, food and travel journalist and has eaten her way through much of the free world for four decades, while writing about it in books, newspapers and magazines. She is the Editor in Chief of DINE magazine.