Has a meat-free lifestyle left you looking peaky?
So you survived Veganuary… but going dairy-free can play havoc with your skin. Lucy Holden tries an exclusive new facial
‘If your body doesn’t get the protein it needs, your skin can become dry and sallow’
In a swanky London salon, I am having my face pummelled by softly spoken Andrea. She crunches her knuckles along my jaw, then uses both hands to flap at my cheeks, which can only be described as feeling like I’m holding my face against a hamster wheel. “It’s like a treadmill for your face,” she tells me, before reaching for an electrical device that makes the muscles underneath my skin jump like crickets.
No pain, no gain, they say – which makes me think vegans must be masochists, this being a treatment designed for a very 21st-century problem: vegan face. Veganism is becoming more fashionable and “Veganuary” bigger every year, with around 150,000 people believed to have given up meat, fish and dairy products during the last month, more than double the number last year. Around 542,000 of us were vegans in 2016, according to the Vegan Society.
Switching to a vegan diet is not without its problems. Many find their skin becomes clearer, but only after they’ve got used to eating enough alternative protein.
“Vegan face is definitely a thing,” says Sarah, 26. “When I decided to go vegan last year, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I hadn’t organised my diet with substitutes for the foods I was giving up – I lost a bit of weight but mainly it showed in my face; I looked gaunt and washed out. I was trying to do something I thought was better for my body, and it was making me look worse.”
Others find they break out in spots and it can turn them off the diet completely. “My skin got really bad at first,” says Fay, 29. “It was so frustrating because I had acne as a teenager and had always been told that dairy made it worse. When I became a vegan, I thought my skin would be the clearest it had ever been, but I suddenly got loads of spots. After three or four weeks, it went down, but if I’d had it for months, I’d probably have given up the diet. It sounds vain, but having blotchy skin makes you selfconscious.”
Full disclosure: I’m not vegan, but I dabbled with the idea last month. And, after a few weeks, I did look different – my skin was drier and more pallid. Admittedly, it’s harder to tell in winter, but there was a marked change in my pre- and post-vegan visage.
“More and more of us are reducing our meat intake, and it can negatively impact our skin,” says Inge Theron, the founder of Facegym. Her salons in Chelsea and Selfridges on Oxford Street (which use only vegan products), are known for high-intensity manual facial workouts, and have won fans including Princess Beatrice and Poppy Delevingne.
One of the most popular is the vegan face “workout”, which costs £1,000 for six hour-long sessions, or £200 for a one-off. Designed to improve circulation, encourage collagen production and build up facial muscle,
“If your body doesn’t get the protein it needs, your skin can become dry, sallow, crepey and lacklustre, with saggy jowls and a loss of muscle tone and elasticity,” Theron adds. “The workout gives customers a radiance and glow that can be lost from reducing protein intake.”
During the “warm-up”, a ball the size of an apple is rolled over your face and pressed hard on your chest to help your breathing. Then your face and neck are covered in gel and a radio frequency machine is used to “boost collagen” under the skin. It heats my face to 40C, which is almost unbearably hot and means Andrea can’t keep the machine still, running it over my skin like you’d dash across scorching sand barefoot.
Then the “cardio” starts – a massage designed to improve circulation. The device that makes my facial muscles jump is, in fact, a bestseller. Called the “Facegym Pro”, you can take one home for £400 and is recommended as a non-invasive alternative to Botox.
During the cooldown, a derma roller that resembles a tiny metal lawnmower (£30) is run over my face to prickle the skin into renewing cells, then I am pressed with a refrigerated jade stone (£35) and sprayed with flower water.
While a diet overhaul is usually the first port of call for new vegans, many soon start to analyse their use of other animal-derived products. Sales of vegan deodorants were up by 900per cent on Amazon in January. And vegan mascaras, make-up brushes and beard-grooming kits were among their bestsellers. Animal ingredients in cosmetics include guanine – which gives many mascaras, lipsticks and nail varnishes their shimmer and is found in fish scales – and retinal, a source of vitamin A found in many anti-ageing products, but which is almost always derived from animals.
Fay and Sarah say that switching to vegan cosmetics is easier than overhauling their diets, with The Body Shop and Lush particularly good. But, adds Fay, “vegan-friendly” products weren’t good enough. Her hair became so dry and straw-like that she “needed deep conditioners that restored the follicles and were specifically intended for vegan hair”.
Karine Jackson, who owns a salon in central London, has seen a huge surge in vegan customers over the past 12 months, with many phoning up ahead of their appointments to check that the products she uses are vegan (they are, bar two).
“Most of my new clients are vegan now,” she says. “It’s causing a shift in the beauty industry.”
The salon offers specific treatments to help “fix” problems associated with vegan hair. “We use Organic Colour Systems Power Build products (shampoos and conditioners cost around £11), which contain wheat protein that helps strengthen hair that might not be getting enough protein from your diet,” she explains.
And she uses vegan highlights, which start at £92 for a full-head and come in every colour you can imagine. Jackson tells me violet shades are very “in” this year.
Possibly not for me, though –
I was concerned enough about telling my family I was dabbling with veganism, so purple hair might be a step too far.