Fruity Tooty Beauty!

(See 5/15/08 update below in comments)

Yes, I know that old song's actual title is "Tootie Fruity." But here, I'm tooting the horns, clanging the bells, sounding the alarms...EAT MORE FRUIT!!!

We women are deeply programmed to spend buckets of money on creams, lotions, gels, serums. Budget prices at the drugstore, luxe prices at the department store, and extravagant prices at the dermatologist's office! Then further up the scale, financially and drastically, are the growing array of invasive peels, lasers, procedures and surgeries.

Why? To look young - or at least younger, to look our best, to look dewy fresh and wrinkle-free, to look flawless.

Nothing wrong with those desires, but we're going about it in the wrong way!

We need to reverse our beauty regimes and start them from the inside out! Our entire bodies need to be "beautiful," full of health and biological efficiency...only then will our skin - from our faces to our feet, the body's largest component - look its absolute best.

What we need to be, and look!, dewy, fresh, plump, glowing - i.e., younger!-and with fewer wrinkles, is at the fruit stand, not the cosmetics aisle!

Beauty really does come from within! Now, usually when we hear that statement, we're thinking the "within" is our personality...the lovely personality makes a beautiful woman, as it were.

But the inner beauty that I'm talking about is the true physical beauty that can only come from the truly healthy physical system. Just having a beating heart and legs that carry us around and eyes that work doesn't mean that our systems are healthy.

For most of us, our systems are barely functioning! Struggling silently from within! Which is why our skin sags, crepes, and droops...around our eyes, our necks, our elbows, our knees. Basically, if it looks bad on the outside, it's even worse on the inside! High blood pressure, high cholesterol, clogged arteries, mental "senior moments," overweight, headaches, bloating, easily fatigued, poor sleep, badly nourished...fatty fast foods and krispy kremes, all these interior problems show on our exteriors!

There are dozens and dozens of websites, blogs, magazine articles, books that detail the benefits of fresh fruits. Antioxidants abound, fiber filled, lycopene, vitamins and so on and on!

In this post, I just want to try to have readers seriously consider making FRUIT a major component of their days as the spring and summer harvests bring us blueberries from Oregon (not Chile or Brazil), strawberries from Michigan not Ecuador, Oranges from Florida not Egypt, Grapefruit from Texas not Majorca.

And even more local if you venture away from your supergrocery store - please! - and over to your nearest farmer's market.

Don't let "name brand" grocery store brands lull you into a feeling of safety. The big brands, Dole and Chiquita, recently announced that Cantaloupes - from Honduras - were being recalled after making folks in 16 states (!) seriously ill. (National press release made 3/30/08)

Our big chain grocers have us tranquilized into believing that we, as lucky lucky citizens of this great USofA, can expect every fruit, every vegetable known on the planet twelve months out of the year. We've forgotten, as a society, the rhythms of the farm, the growing seasons, the times of ripeness. Strawberries early, apples in the autumn, peaches in the middle...the NATURAL order of fresh food...ripe and ready in it's own time.

I mean, when you read a strawberry container and it says, in very tiny letters, "product of Kuala Lumpur" or some such place thousands of miles away... take a moment to imagine every creepy thing they've done to those berries to get them to Indianapolis, or St. Louis, or Omaha, or wherever you live, and have them looking red and tempting. Walk Away!!!

So now...spring is here, summer right on the horizon. The freshest of fruits are starting to appear ... gobble them up! Morning! Noon! Night! Snack time!

Did any of you watch the Oprah show when Dr. Oz was talking about fruit, fruit and more fruit!...So no need to take my word for all this, Oprah's got the experts on TV trying to get us to use our brains and to protect our bodies!

That's really the point here. Our bodies are pretty helpless; they're totally dependent on our brains to take care of them. The decisions we make with our minds are crucial to how we feel, how well our bodies function, and ultimately how lovely the wrapper - our skin - covers the whole works.

Fresh fruit cup, anyone?

If you want even more proof that fruits and collagen, that miracle subtance of youth under our skin, have a deep connection. Can't have one without the other, unbreakable bond, see my Vitamin C and Collagen column.