Ordering takeout can make us feel guilty about our laziness, unhealthy eating, and overuse of imperishable Styrofoam. But there’s a new reason to alleviate that guilt – by repurposing those leftovers into a facial mask! The extra sauce that usually ends up in the trash has many beneficial ingredients and nutrients for our skin. Check out the dishes below for post-binge mask-spiration!
1. Bolognese Sauce
Tomato sauce is naturally acidic, and certain types of acid are known to break down dead skin. Are they the same ones in tomato sauce? There’s only one way to find out: by rubbing pasta sauce on your face and leaving it until it dries. Pasta sauce dries to a hard consistency that is difficult to clean off of pots, which is exactly what we expect out of a facemask! And Bolognese has meat in it because human skin is made of meat so meat’s gotta be good for your skin, right? Also, meat is delicious. No eating!
2. Chicken Tikka Masala
The spices in Indian food can cleanse and detoxify your body when eaten, so why not expect the same for your face? The cumin in Masala sauce doubles as a yellow dye, brightening your complexion! Just be sure to apply evenly all over the face to avoid freakish looking streaking. Top off with the yogurt in that small container that you didn’t eat, because yogurt has nutrients and your face needs nutrients.
3. Mexican Mole Sauce
Some say eating chocolate contributes to breakouts, so logically putting it on your face should have the reverse effect. Plus, a good facemask should feel like you’re slapping mud straight from the earth and onto your face and what’s more muddy than a sauce that is brown?!
4. Thai Peanut Sauce
We don’t know if human skin is capable of breaking down the proteins and other nutrient molecules in peanuts and absorbing them, but we do know peanuts pack a variety of nutritious health benefits, including Vitamin E, which is great for skin! So if you’re feeling Thai tonight, feel it with your face! It can’t hurt!
5. General Tso’s Chicken
You might feel bad about eating this sweet, sugary chicken, but you shouldn’t when you’re rubbing the leftovers all over your face – sugar is a known exfoliant! And if your local takeout place looks anything like ours, they’re probably throwing some weird chemicals in the mix. You know what else has weird chemicals in it? All cosmetic products! So introduce the General to your face and let us know how it goes!
Any food with a sauce can probably double as a facemask. It’s in the nature of sauces to be paste-like, and given enough time, will dry into a thicker, harder material. So slap them on your pretty face and make it possibly prettier!
