Are Sardines the Secret to Glowing Skin?

Healthy cooking doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, often the simpler it is, the better it tastes. In Good for You, Test Kitchen editor Rebecca Firkser shares nourishing, craveable recipes that you can pull off in 10 ingredients or less.

Have you also noticed that sardines are everywhere these days? There’s a funny reason why.

It’s no secret that tinned fish as a whole has become more popular in recent years. Part of this is the product’s shelf-stable convenience, which became even more appealing during the lockdown days of COVID. Then canned seafood was sold as the start of a so-called girl dinner. And all the while it’s taken on a newfound coolness, a foodie status symbol if you will, thanks to aesthetic brands like Fishwife, with vibrant packaging and active social media presences. But the growing fervor for sardines hinges on something more superficial, literally and figuratively. Your skin.

For all their benefits, there are some reports detailing higher levels of arsenic (mostly the nontoxic organic compounds, but some potentially harmful inorganic levels) in tinned sardines, as is the case with much fish and seafood. (In 2023, when Joe Rogan found his bloodwork positive for low levels of the toxin, he first suspected he was being poisoned. The culprit was in fact his nighttime ritual of housing three cans of sardines.) Ultimately, compared with other tinned fish, sardines test lower for mercury and other heavy metals, but it’s safest to limit consumption of all varieties to a few servings a week, and of course, consult a healthcare professional for specific concerns.

The raves on TikTok won’t tell you this because, according to many of these videos, sardines are a skincare cure-all. Since being deemed a low-cost, high-reward food when it comes to beauty maintenance, sardines specifically have exploded in popularity. There’s a formal sardine skincare Discover page on TikTok, where one can find everything from sardine hauls taste-testing different brands (our Test Kitchen loves Ortiz and Patagonia), to recipe videos, to popular esthetician Sophie Pavitt waxing poetic on the fish (“one of the best things you can eat,” she says).

People started lighting the cans on fire to “smoke” the fish (please don’t do that). So-called sardinecore has turned into a strange corner of fashion. Even the skincare brand Glossier even partnered with Fishwife on a tin for “a new, dewy-skin ritual to get you glowing from the inside out,” as an April Fool's Day joke. (“Delete this before the TikTok girlies see this,” comments the official account for Care Bears.)

The trend has gone so far that such a thing as “the sardine fast” now exists, where one eats— you guessed it—just sardines for several days. Among all the purported benefits from eating the fish, a writer for Vogue was most interested in trying the diet for its claim to produce “glowing skin.” I absolutely do not endorse eating only sardines, but I will say it’s high time to incorporate the fish into your meals.

A great place to start? My newest Good for You recipe, Chopped Salad With Sardines and Preserved Lemon, of course. Perfect for sardine newbies and devotees alike, it’s an ensemble production. We’ve got seasonal vegetables (like tomato and cucumber), zingy preserved lemon, and crunchy-salty pita chips. And in between all those other great things, little bites of tender, savory, briny sardines. It may or may not make your skin look more luminous, but you know what? It's a feel-great meal either way.