Take some fresh, leafy spinach greens. Top them with broccoli, zucchini, corn, and green and orange bell peppers. Eat this mixture regularly, and then see whether people can estimate your age. We bet they guess younger, because this mix can help your skin maintain that snap-back elastic quality of your youth. Talk about salad days!

The magic ingredients: lutein and zeaxanthin, two nutrients from a group called carotenoids that are found in abundance in foods like leafy greens and yellow-green veggies. Your skin naturally produces these compounds, and when women in a study took both of them in supplement form, their skin had better hydration, improved elasticity, and increased protection against harmful ultraviolet rays. The effect was even greater when the women, as part of their nightly skincare routine, also used lotions that contained the nutrients (they get oxidized by UV rays during the daytime).

Prefer to eat them rather than slather them? Then boost your ability to soak up the nutrients by using dressing that contains a little olive or canola oil. Carotenoids require a little fat in order to be absorbed through the small intestine. (Note: "A little" is not half the bottle!)

More research is needed to confirm the role lutein and zeaxanthin play in skin health. But it’s smart to eat them even if you already look younger than Anne Hathaway; quite a bit of research has shown that they help protect your eyes from aging, too.

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