Science: Healthy, Vegetable-Hued Faces Are the Most Attractive

While eating a diet high in vegetables has always had health benefits, now new research suggests that it can make you more attractive too, especially if you eat a lot of carrots. (Maybe that’s why Bugs Bunny was so hot to me as a kid?)

A British research team gathered 56 people and showed half of them photos of Caucasian faces, skewed to be either yellow or purple, and the other half viewed the same color tones but in scrambled images of those faces.

From Discover:

Researchers found that participants rated yellowish faces as more attractive than faces with unhealthier color. But participants who saw scrambled images showed no preference between the two color palettes. Thus it appears that the yellow color of faces is attractive for its message about a person’s underlying health, “not because of a sensory bias towards yellow colors,” write the authors in Biology Letters.

Well how do you get this healthy vegetable glow? By eating foods with a higher levels of carotenoids — burgers, milkshakes, french fries, carrots, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, leafy greens, etc. You know, all the foods you’re supposed to eat. However, avoid shameful, sad purple veggies like eggplant and purple potatoes because a purple facial color indicates a lower level of carotenoids, which is linked to more infection and greater risk of mortality. Actually, no, eggplant and purple potatoes are fine, there is no connection whatsoever with purple veggies and a purple face — but just know that if you have a purple-death-face, ain’t nobody gonna bone your ghoulish ass.

Moral of the story: eat more carrots, look better, see in the dark (maybe), become Carrot Top (not likely), book Vegas show (even more unlikely), marry showgirl and start successful nationwide chain of pressed vegetable health bars that put Jamba Juice out of business (I’ll let you masticate my right foot and serve it to me in a frosty mug if this happens).