TikTok Myth of the Week: “natural SPF” Supplements
How great would it be if we could prevent sunburn and skin cancer without sunscreen simply by eating certain natural foods? It’s a really compelling idea, which explains why it’s all over TikTok. Too bad it doesn’t really work.
Can we just give up this nonsense about sunscreen being toxic already?
TikToks who use food as sunscreen don’t always say so openly, but they are peddling the long-held myth that sunscreen is somehow bad for us. (You don’t want to know how many “uckshully, sunscreen causes cancer” statements I had to scroll through while writing this article.)
As I’ve written before, this is not some sensible risk management message. This is complete nonsense . The harms of UV exposure are specific and well documented. Sunscreen is not proven to be harmful, it’s mostly guesswork, and every now and then there are legitimate concerns at the “hey, it would be useful to do more research to see if some types of sunscreen are safer than others.” This is absolutely not like “avoid sunscreen because it’s bad for you.”
You don’t have to take it from me. The American Academy of Dermatology has a page on sunscreen safety where they summarize the evidence as follows: “Scientific research supports the benefits of wearing sunscreen when you are outdoors.”
What Science Really Says About Food and Sun Damage
TikToks about natural sun protection provide a detailed list of products, vaguely saying they protect against sun damage. Sometimes they recommend a specific supplement. But they never go into detail about what is important to know when recommending preventive treatment, such as:
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What dosage is needed to achieve the desired result?
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Has this actually been tested on humans?
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What protection does the food or supplement give you and how is it measured?
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The protection starts working immediately, and if not, after how long?
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Does effectiveness vary from person to person?
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Does the protective ingredient break down over time and is there a way to renew its protection (equivalent to reapplying sunscreen)?
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What are the disadvantages of the food or supplement when used at the recommended dosage?
Real FDA approved sunscreens have answers to all of these questions. There are no products recommended on TikTok. Instead of this detailed information, we simply get statements like “Eat watermelon, tomatoes, walnuts, carrots…”.
If you look at the research, none of it actually supports the claims that TikTokers make (or imply). For example, here’s a study showing that the antioxidant found in walnuts can protect human skin cells from some of the effects of UV exposure. This sounds promising until you realize that the skin cells do not come from humans, but rather area mutant cell line of human origin (sounds strange, but is a completely normal thing in scientific laboratories). The researchers obtained walnut extract and combined it with cells in cell culture dishes , which are essentially tiny test tubes. So, to summarize, this study did not include people who consumed walnuts (as food), sunlight, or sunburn.
Here’s a more current study : Light-skinned, non-smoking volunteers ate 40 grams of tomato paste (about three tablespoons) along with 10 grams of olive oil every day. After 10 weeks, they showed less skin redness in response to the UV lamp. This is promising! Very cool! Heck, if you felt inspired and wanted to start eating tomato paste (taking a small jar of it every 4 days), I wouldn’t stop you.
But notice what the study did n’t find. It doesn’t tell us what results people with light or dark skin tones will get. It doesn’t tell us how this protection changes (or doesn’t change) over time—would you get the same results at the end of summer as you did at the beginning if you used it as your only sun protection?
And, most importantly, it turned out that people who used tomato paste had less skin redness. Tomato paste did not completely prevent sunburn . TikTokers talk about these products as if they were magic potions or cards to help avoid sunburn. Even the most promising studies do not confirm this.
And, of course, everyone sells supplements.
If there’s one thing wellness TikTokers love, it’s selling nutritional supplements. Dietary supplements are cheap for manufacturers to produce, easy to ship, easy to explain (“X is good for Y”), and anyone can add an affiliate link to their bio to get a cut of the profits.
It’s the same with these supplements that claim to prevent sunburn. The most popular right now is Heliocare, which of course has a “brand affiliate program” . It’s made from the fern Polypodium leucotomos , and there’s research (!) to support the idea that it may help reduce sunburn a little .
But, as with the tomato research, the results are at the “hmm, pretty interesting” level. This is not something that will allow you to skip sunscreen if you are responsible for it. I’m looking at the results graphs of the article and I’m honestly not sure if I can see a difference in redness at later time points. If the supplement only delays the onset of sunburn, it doesn’t seem very helpful. (Actually, I might wonder if it ‘s worse , since it may cause you to stay out of the house longer before realizing how bad the burn is developing.)
Again, a statistically detectable difference in redness is not the same as completely (or even nearly) preventing sunburn. It’s also worth noting that the Heliocare dosage (one 240-milligram tablet per day) is less than what was used in the study (7.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, which is 528 milligrams for a 154-pound person, or more than two tablets). If you take three tablets a day, a $34.99 bottle will only last you 20 days. I don’t see any benefit over regular sunscreen use.