For those interested in becoming a “Beauty Foodie,” Scott-Vincent Borba explains what to eat in order to make you beautiful from the inside out. In his new book, Cooking Your Way To Gorgeous, Borba offers tips, guidelines and recipes that you can eat and some that you can even put on your face. Each chapter starts out with Borba’s top five “hero foods” that pertain to a certain beauty topic and are then used in the following recipes. For instance, chapter one starts out with top five hero foods for hair and scalp health and then focuses on how to utilize those items in dishes and home remedies.
As a 22-year-old with mild acne, I spent a week reading through and trying to make various recipes from Borba’s book and watched to see if it made a difference in my appearance and how I felt. Even though this might already be a specialized cookbook, there are plenty of options for those who are vegetarian, have special allergies or intolerance to dairy. I decided to take on four different dishes: grilled salmon with fruit salsa, super sweet potato chips, chicken sauté with bell and chili pepper kick and grilled fish tacos with radish-cabbage slaw. Each dish contained ingredients that were not only good for you, but they complemented each other well and made for some pretty tasty meals. (Grilled salmon with fruit salsa is my favorite.)
While certain concoctions like Wild-Caught Alaskan Salmon with Tomato Salsa were going to cost a bit more than sweet potato chips, the price ranges on most of the ingredients needed were manageable. Borba suggests, “Food is like medicine, so you want to always be putting good food in to avoid the medicine later!” To save some money, I tried to stick to recipes that required similar ingredients like grape seed oil so I wouldn’t spend a fortune on buying the different types of oils called for. Since almost all of the recipes call for fresh ingredients, some being a bit more obscure than others, multiple markets may be required.
Borba’s experience comes from being a celebrity esthetician and what I found most appealing about Cooking Your Way To Gorgeous was how the properties of the ingredients were explained pertaining to how they would benefit certain aspects of the body. For instance, Borba explains how sweet potatoes contain beta-carotene and will convert to vitamin A in the body to promote cell turnover for healthy skin. However, with certain recipes like dark chocolate and pistachio cookies, I had to wonder if this was actually beneficial or just a strategic cheat. As for my own results, no life-changing skin turnaround, but overall this book isn’t for those looking for a one-trick beauty wonder, but for people interested in making a conscious choice to change their diet and lifestyle.
