Your face is positively glowing: but how positively and is it attractive?

Faces are said to glow with a touch of sun and a touch of tan. But faces can also glow from pregnancy, and high levels of carotenoid. In humans, carotenoid comes from an intake of fruit and vegetables.

Researchers wanted to see what type of facial glow was more attractive to other people (Wellbeing No. 154, 2014; wellbeing.com.au – Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology). They conducted three experiments.

The first experiment involved people looking at images of faces that had a glow from an intake of high levels of carotenoids from fruit and vegetables and compared them with images of faces of people with low carotenoid levels. The best-known carotenoid is carotene found in crude palm oil, carrots and apricots (which gives them their bright orange colour). Hence images were of people who had increased their intake of carrots and apricots, and those who had not had a high intake of fruit and vegetables. People were asked to indicate which faces were attractive. The result was that 86% of people rated the high-carotenoid faces as more attractive.

The second experiment involved people looking at images of faces with high melanin pigmentation (skin tan) and compared them with images of faces with low melanin pigmentation (no tan). People were asked to indicate which faces were attractive. The result was that 78.5% of people rated the high melanin pigmentation – tanned faces – as more attractive.

The third experiment was a comparison of images of faces with high carotenoid levels against high melanin pigmentation faces (i.e. a comparison of faces that glow due to high fruit and vegetable intake with images of tanned faces). People were asked to indicate which faces were attractive. The result was that 75.9% of people rated the high carotenoid faces as more attractive than the tanned faces.

The researchers concluded that eating more carrots and apricots is more likely to produce a healthy facial glow that other people would find attractive. What they don’t add is that an excess of carrots can also produce an orange appearance, and too much sun can produce sunburn, so how much is enough and how much is too much?

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