Eating Potato Chips Can Make You Look Older. Here's Why

When you're craving salt, it can be sooooo hard to say no to potato chips. Sure, you know that they are high in fat, carbs, and sodium... oh, and let's not forget calories (per FoodWatch). But maybe you're not really watching your weight (lucky!) or you plan to get in a great workout session to burn it off. You'll still want to put the Pringles down and back away slowly, because this junk food favorite can make you look older.

All of those things that make potato chips unhealthy for your body are not kind to your complexion, either. Let's take salt, which isn't great for your blood pressure. Well, it's no youth serum, either. "Excess salt in the body draws more fluid out of the cells to help neutralize the salt and draw it out of the body," Beth Warren, RD, told Bustle. "As a result, your skin gets drier because of the lack of fluid." Plus, frying chips in oil at a high heat can release free radicals, which accelerate the aging process and weaken the skin's elasticity, according to Healthline. That's not all — the refined sugars that are in chips actually damage your skin's collagen, Delish reported.

Like many processed foods, potato chips may contain trans fats, which have been linked to diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular problems. Eating foods high in trans fat won't be doing your appearance any favors, either. These unhealthy fats make your skin more susceptible to UV damage from the sun, according to Health. Plus, because they are associated with the aging effect of inflammation, they can make your skin look "older, stiffer, more wrinkled," noted nutrition expert Dr. Lori Shemek.

If you've got your favorite bag of potato chips handy, perhaps you don't see any mention of trans fats in the nutrition information panel. This doesn't mean you're in the clear to eat them; as long as the food has a half a gram of trans fat or less, the Food and Drug Administration allows it to list the number of trans fats as zero... but even a little trans fat is unhealthy. According to Healthline, if the ingredients include partially hydrogenated oil, you're still getting enough trans fats to do damage to your body — inside and out.