The dilemma is that I want gorgeous, tanned skin, but I have to grapple with the fact that the sun contributes to premature wrinkles and breaks down collagen in our skin's cellular matrix.

Although this happens, our bodies do regenerate new collagen. Lifestyle choices dictate how much collagen is made and how much is destroyed.

Vitamin C is vital to the production of new collagen. You can help your body rebuild what was destroyed over the weekend by consuming the vitamin in the form of whole, raw foods.

When the body produces collagen, a complex series of events takes place both inside and outside of cells. Dr. Jerry Gordon, a national dean's list scholar in undergraduate biology at Rutgers, explains that Vitamin C is active inside of cells, where it hydroxylates, or adds hydrogen and oxygen to lysine and proline, which are amino acids.

“This helps form procollagen, a precursor molecule, which is then made into collagen outside of the cell. Without vitamin C, collagen formation is disrupted.”

Dr. Gordon also cautions that “vitamin C is easily damaged during the food preparation stage, such as during chopping, exposure to air, cooking, boiling, and being submerged in water.”

To maximize your intake of vitamin C, always try to eat whole, raw foods as much as possible.

The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of vitamin C is 60 to 90 milligrams per day, depending on age and gender. The average person consumes 72 mg (about 1 orange), but there's nothing wrong with getting more.

It's only possible to get vitamin C toxicity from consuming too much of the vitamin through supplements or fortified foods. Through whole food sources, it's not possible to obtain toxicity because our bodies are able to cope by storing unused vitamins.

If you’re looking for a food that will naturally prevent and fill in wrinkles, Royal Jelly is a strong contender.

Royal Jelly is a thick substance produced by the endocrine glands of nurse bees for the purpose of feeding the queen bee and larvae (baby bees).

Royal Jelly contains collagen, a main protein in our connective tissues which keeps our skin youthful, smooth, and wrinkle-free. A Japanese team of scientists found in 2004 that it promotes the synthesis of new collagen in the body.(1) It also contains 28 trace minerals, including Sulfur (S), Zinc (Zn), Manganese (Mn), and Iron (Fe), which are essential for skin beauty.(2) Sulfur, Manganese, and Zinc promote cell and tissue regeneration, which helps to produce collagen that has been destroyed through lifestyle factors, such as excessive exposure to the sun, alcohol consumption, and eating many advanced glycated end-products (“A.G.E.s”) in refined & processed foods. Further, iron-rich blood gives the skin a youthful, “colourful” glow.

Royal Jelly can be found in natural grocery stores, online, or at specialty stores such as Honey World in Toronto's St. Lawrence Market.

It's a little on the expensive side ($62 for a jar), so if you’re cash-strapped, a regular good quality unpasteurized or raw honey for about $10 also contains many of the same trace minerals, including Silicon (Si). Please note that we earn no financial benefits from your purchase of any bee products.

What's even more interesting is that The Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology reported that Royal Jelly seemed to be the result of nurse bees’ lactation, lending it the same function as human breast milk, and indeed had the same homeostatic adjustment in the body that human milk does.(3) In laymen's terms, it stabilizes the body's internal chemical environment after we alter it through a poor lifestyle: for example, restoring the acid-alkaline balance of the blood, and stabilizing blood glucose levels.