Avocado Face Mask by bellinatse
Happy Friday everyone! I'm so excited to introduce you to a new segment of this website. Every Friday, we will feature a beauty food and its eco-friendly and organic benefits for our skin and body. I hope that you'll find it useful! So which food has the honor of being featured first in this segment? It's one of my favorite foods: the avocado. This green baby is packed with healthy goodness such as fiber, potassium, and vitamins C, K, folate, and B6. Avocado is creamy and filling. I love it whether it's in the form of guacamole, or as thin slices layered on toast and
topped with chopped tomatoes and a poached egg. It's the perfect ingredient for a quick lunch or snack. Of course, avocados are not just for eating; they make a great face mask. Smash half an avocado, mix in lemon juice for an added astringent effect or honey for extra moisturizing properties, and leave the mixture on your face for around 15 minutes or until it dries. The avocado base will leave your skin feeling plump and moisturized. Don't forget to give your eyes so avocado love as well. Keihl's makes a great avocado eye cream, which I would recommend for dry skin types. Oily to combination skin types might find the formula to be too thick.
Beauty Food: Pomegranate by bellinatse
This Friday's eco-friendly beauty food is my favorite childhood memory: the pomegranate. I would eat these precious little gems when I was little. I would be on the playground and would break off chunks for my friends. Our little fingers would dig into each little crevice. Each seed would give off bursts of tartness in our little mouths and we would squeal with
delight. Little did we know that this was a beauty food packed with anti-oxidants, Vitamin C and B5, potassium, and fiber. These days, the scent and color of the pomegranate is used in many skincare and beauty products. Burt's Bees makes a cranberry and pomegranate body butter. Both fruits are known for its rosy red color and tartness and their scents are divine. Rub it on after a hot shower and you'll be sure to get complicates for smelling so tart all day long. Can't get enough pomegranate? Korres to the rescue; the eco-friendly brand makes a great line of lip butters. It's color range is inspired by various delectable fruits including, of course, our tarty friend. Smooth the lip butter on our lips and try not to get distracted by the irresistible flavor. Lastly, get your daily pomegranate kick by picking up a bottle of POM. Now we don't have to get our fingers all red and sticky when we can have this fruit on the go. Who knew being beautiful could be that easy?
Black Sesame by bellinatse
Hair. It can be our friend or our worst enemy. We comb, we condition, we straighten, we curl, we dye our hair. Frankly, I can see why our hair sometimes just gives up on us. We just don't love it as much as we should. Having a good hair day can make all the difference. Having a good hair week requires daily hair love. And that's not just conditioning or trimming our split ends. Health comes from the inside. Taking a multivitamin is a start. But have you heard of black sesame?
Black sesame contains polyunsaturated fatty acid, vitamin E, protein, and lecithin. These tiny black seeds are great for premature hair loss or grey hair. Black sesame has long been added into sweet treats in Asia, which explains why we have the best onyx-colored hair. In Korea, black sesame is ground up and used to make a porridge. Stir in some brown sugar, and you have the best alternative to your morning oatmeal.
Eco-Friendly Superfruit: Goji Berry by bellinatse One of my New Year's resolutions is to get my blog back to regular programing. And that begins with Friday Food for Thought (remember this or this?) The lucky superfood that will get the new year off to the right start is the Goji berry. Goji berries are full of antioxidants. Goji berries have been used by Asians for over a century. This berry, indigenous to Tibet, China, and Mongolia, is packed with vitamin C and antioxidants, 18 amino acids and 21 trace minerals, making it the smallest berry that packs the biggest nutrient punch. Goji berries are known to lower blood pressure and fight diabetes and free radicals. To get the most out of this superfruit, eat it on its own as a snack, or mix it with some nuts. One of my favorite food bloggers, Joy the Baker, created a recipe for homemade granola with goji berries. You can also let it steep in hot water and stir in some honey for the perfect tea substitute. The goji berries release a subtle bitter taste, so adding honey will naturally offset the bitterness. Other additives that you can substitute honey with is ginger, chrysanthemum, and rock sugar. Pangea Organics features a great antioxidant mask that boasts goji berry, matcha tea and acai berry as its main ingredients. It's basically
an anti-oxidant triple threat in a squeeze tube. Used during an athome weekend spa will result in a double take in the mirror -- after you wash it off of course.
Beauty Food: Rice by bellinatse Ah rice, a staple Asian grain. A food item that some of us can't eat a meal without. Like having a sandwich, but without any bread (think
of the mess!). Don't underestimate those tiny grains of rice -- it's more than just a food staple. It's also an eco-friendly DIY skincare item. When preparing rice as a main entree, it's always necessary to wash and drain the rice with water two to three times before cooking it. Next time you do so, don't let the water go to waste. After washing the rice for the second or third time, save the rice water. You can either pour it into a spray bottle, refrigerate it, and use it as a mist or toner, or you can use it as a facial cleanser. Cooked rice can also be used on the face. Take a small amount, roll it up into the shape of a ball, and gently roll it across your face; when done you'll see that the rice has taken any dirty debris, sebum, and flakey skin off of your face, leaving you with a smoother, softer complexion. Rice's starch content can naturally get rid of the skins excess sebum and oil. Rice also contains vital nutrients such as vitamin B3, vitamin B1, and vitamin B6. When we wash and drain the rice, it's nutrients are left in the water, making it the perfect natural toner and cleanser, suitable for oily or sensitive skin. Any kind of rice grain can be used; brown rice contains vitamin E and B12,
red rice is a good source of calcium, iron and vitamin B1, and black rice has antioxidants and vitamin E. My mother used rice water to cleanse her face as a teenager when she was experiencing acne, as there were no acne medications or skincare products available when she was growing up. So everyday, after preparing rice for lunch or dinner, she would save the rice water and use it to wash her face. The rice water definitely helped calm her acne condition, and kept her skin moisturized and toned, while helping to get rid of excess sebum. Don't always eat rice? Try using Japanese brand Rice Force's skincare line. Their products are produced with rice extracts at a sake brewery; the owner of the sake brewery discovered that the workers' hands remained considerably young after working with the rice extracts to produce the Japanese alcohol, and the idea to make a skincare line out of a simple ingredient was formed. So never underestimate natural beauty; sometime less is more. Simple organic foods are not only nutritious, they're also great for our skin.