It’s official: excess sugar can age your skin. The latest research from Clinique reveals that guzzling sweet things such as fizzy drinks and sticky doughnuts can lead to wrinkles, loss of elasticity and premature degeneration. How does this happen? Excess sugar bonds with protein fibres in the skin and this chemical reaction produces dangerous wastes called advanced glycosylation end products and also free radicals. The effect is that fibres stiffen and the skin loses elasticity, becoming more vulnerable to wrinkling, sagging and UV damage. This is not exactly news: the anti-ageing expert Dr Nicholas Perricone has long been extolling the benefits of a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet for optimum skin health. But when Clinique joins in, you know something’s up. So, how much sugar is excess sugar? According to Clinique’s research, the average Briton consumes about 20 tsp per day of added sugar; we should be aiming for 6-10 tsp. Along with the film Super Size Me and books such as Greg Critser’s Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, which exposed the dangers of fast food, Clinique is capturing the zeitgeist. If you want to read more about the multiple dangers of sugar, William Dufty’s Sugar Blues is excellent. Your skin will thank you for it.

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