Pomegranate

A natural history

The pomegranate is among the oldest cultivated fruits on earth, grown across Persia and the Middle East for some five thousand years, its dried fruits even recovered from Bronze Age tombs. Native to the lands from Iran to northern India, it traveled with trade and conquest throughout the ancient world, treasured as much for its beauty as its taste. Split open, its hundreds of glistening, ruby seeds made it a near-universal emblem of fertility and abundance, and it threads through the myths of many cultures, most famously the Greek tale of Persephone, whose pomegranate seeds bound her to the changing seasons.

Its uses were as old as its cultivation. In ancient Egypt the fruit was recorded as a remedy and buried with the dead, and in the classical Indian tradition the fruit, called dadima, was valued as a heart-supporting, restorative food woven into many preparations. Across these cultures the pomegranate was both nourishment and medicine.

What it does for your skin

Pomegranate's gift to skin is its remarkable antioxidant density. In laboratory and reconstructed-skin models, a pomegranate-rind polyphenol extract showed strong antioxidant activity and reduced markers of UV-induced damage, the kind of action linked to more protected-looking skin.^[1] Its compounds have also been shown in cultured skin cells to calm the inflammatory signaling that UV light triggers.^[2] These are early, laboratory findings, but they help explain why pomegranate is so valued for brighter, more resilient-looking skin.

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