A huge amount of evidence has shown that plant-based diets aren’t only good for losing weight.
Study after study has found that eating a diet rich in plant-based food is great for improving your health and reducing your risk of disease, and it might help you live longer too.
Despite the volume of evidence, though, obesity rates in the US are still at concerning levels, suggesting the message isn’t getting through to enough people.
But what if we’re going about this the wrong way?
In a new study, researchers propose there may be another, more impactful way to appeal to people to eat healthier – and it’s not the familiar refrain about their long-term health outlook.
“Traditional public health messaging emphasizes disease prevention and longevity, yet personal motivations for dietary change often center on appearance and social outcomes,” researchers explain in a new paper in Recent Progress in Nutrition, led by first author and nutritionist David Goldman from the University of Helsinki in Finland.
“Framing dietary change in terms of visible and socially meaningful outcomes, such as attractiveness, may therefore complement traditional health messaging by aligning personal motivations with public health aims.”
In their paper, Goldman and co-author Matthew Nagra, a nutrition researcher from the University of British Columbia in Canada, reviewed over 30 published studies examining the links between diet and perceived physical attractiveness.
It’s worth noting Goldman also works in research and development for the nutrition company Metabite, and both he and Nagra have previously consulted for Soy Nutrition Institute Global – a conflict that’s disclosed in the paper. So that needs to be taken into account when considering the study’s findings.
According to the researchers, there are three primary pathways through which diet may influence attractiveness, including facial appearance, how we smell, and body composition.
In terms of facial attractiveness, eating foods rich in carotenoids – yellow, orange, and red color pigments found in vegetables and fruits – is known to affect the coloration of skin, and has been linked to people being rated as looking more attractive and healthier in a number of studies.
The researchers are careful to point out, though, that just because experiments show carotenoid intake may improve perceived health, that doesn’t mean you’re actually healthier on the inside.
“Carotenoid coloration functions primarily as a perceptual cue to health status rather than a direct index of verified physiological health,” the researchers write.
Another way diet might influence perceived attractiveness is through smell, with studies showing evidence that plant-forward diets are linked to more pleasant-smelling sweat in men compared against the sweat odor of more meat-heavy diets (although the results weren’t totally clear-cut).
Interestingly, garlic, which is stereotypically infamous for its pungent smell on people’s breath, may actually increase the attractiveness of body odor, with one experiment finding garlic consumers’ odor was rated as more attractive and pleasant than people who didn’t eat garlic.
In terms of body fat composition, the researchers note experiments have shown that lower levels of body fat have generally been linked with higher rated attractiveness in both men and women.
They cautiously suggest that since plant-forward dietary patterns are associated with lower BMI and greater body fat reduction relative to animal-based diets, eating a plant-forward diet could be a way people might be able to boost their health while potentially also raising their perceived attractiveness.
But it’s important to point out there’s no evidence directly suggesting plant-based diets change people’s body composition in ways that people find attractive, and the researchers also note that there are serious ethical considerations to bear in mind when we’re talking about how people’s weight may affect their attractiveness.
“Appearance-based health messaging has been found to carry risks of reinforcing harmful body image norms, increasing self-objectification, and exacerbating thin-ideal internalization,” the authors write.
“Weight-centric messaging may increase body shame, particularly in individuals at elevated risk for eating disorders, and stigmatizing campaigns neither motivate behavior change nor avoid negative psychological outcomes.”
Because of these concerns, the researchers say public health campaigns that emphasize physical attractiveness should focus on the visually detectable effects of increasing fruit and vegetable intake on skin coloration, and the research so far suggests it could be successful.
Related: Scientists Pitted Keto Against Mediterranean And Low-Fat Diets. Keto Won on One Clear Health Measure.
One experiment showed that people who viewed personalized visualizations of how diet-induced changes in skin color would affect their appearance ended up eating more fruit and vegetables over 10 weeks compared to participants who didn’t receive the visualizations, and other research has made similar findings.
For people who are mostly interested in improving their appearance in the here and now, appealing to their desire for attractiveness might be a better bet than conventional health messaging.
“Framing attractiveness as a health incentive shifts the focus from distant, abstract disease risk to immediate, tangible indicators of vitality,” the researchers write.
“When executed with care, these approaches may increase engagement with whole-food, plant-rich dietary patterns while supporting long-term public health objectives.”
The findings are reported in Recent Progress in Nutrition.
This article was fact-checked by Fiona MacDonald and edited by Fiona MacDonald. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know.
