Eating processed food makes your face less attractive, study finds
How attractive your face looks appears to be linked to the kind of food you have just eaten, according to new research in France suggesting that dating trouble can be as much to do with bad manners and bad breath as it is with eating too much processed food.
A University of Montpellier team sat over 100 men and women down for a series of tests, asking them questions about their eating habits, making them eat food laden with refined carbohydrates before having them rate other participants' physical attractiveness based on photos taken 2 hours after the feeding.
"Consuming the high-glycemic breakfast was associated with lower subsequent facial attractiveness ratings for both men and women," they said in research published by the science journal PLOS One.
"Chronic consumption of refined carbohydrates during breakfast and snacks was also associated with lower attractiveness ratings, although consumption of high-energy foods at these times was associated with higher attractiveness ratings," the team added.
The researchers said they limited the test to those with four European-origin grandparents, but added that they had accounted for factors that also "could affect attractiveness," listing "actual age, perceived age, BMI, smoking habits, and facial hairiness."
"While the effects of refined carbohydrates on certain hormones are well-documented, it is less known that sex hormones can also be affected. Certain traits, such as facial attractiveness, are influenced by sex hormones," said the University of Montpellier’s Claire Berticat.
Other research published over the past decade has pointed to fruit and vegetables, which provide antioxidants that improve skin tone and colour, as making people more attractive, with pumpkins and apricots more recently described as making male pheromones more enticing.
