An orange a day may truly keep your wrinkles away. A new study has suggested that consumption of foods rich in Vitamin C habitually helps preventing skin ageing.

Vitamin C, which is also called ascorbic acid, is found in various fruit and vegetables. The main sources of Vitamin C consist of tomatoes, lemon, peppers, broccoli, brussels sprouts, oranges, kiwi fruit, strawberries, leafy greens, papaya, mango, watermelon, cauliflower, cabbage, raspberries and pineapples.

British researchers have detached links between nutrient consumption and skin aging in 4,025 women aged between 40 to 74 using information from the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

All the women experienced wide dermatologic examinations designed to assess skin wrinkling and other facets of skin ageing, and also completed a review listing all the foods they consumed in a particular day.

Skin ageing was defined as having a wrinkled look, senile dryness and skin atrophy.

The study by nutritional epidemiologist Maeve C Cosgrove and other co-researchers have discovered that those who consumed plenty of Vitamin C-rich foods had fewer wrinkles as compared to those whose diets carried little of the vitamin.

According to Cosgrove, “Vitamin C is an antioxidant that has been shown to play a role in the synthesis of collagen, the protein that helps keep skin elastic. Our findings add evidence to a predominately supplement and topical application-based hypothesis that what we eat affects our skin-ageing appearance,” Cosgrove added.

“This is one of the first studies to examine the impact of nutrients from foods rather than supplements on skin ageing. Diets rich in Omega-6 fatty acid were found to be associated with less skin ageing from dryness and thinning while higher fat diets and those higher in carbohydrates were found to be linked to more wrinkling.”

Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin that is bery important in the formation of collagen, a protein, which provides structure to bones, cartilage, muscle, and blood vessels.