As I flipped through a recent issue of my teenage daughter's InStyle magazine, I was bombarded by a lot of marketing messages about what would make my skin look its youngest and best.

And I realized that foodstuffs top the list for what marketers in 2007 want me to believe will improve my skin - that is, food smeared on my skin, not ingested.

Rice, wheat proteins, fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices, lycopene, shiitake mushroom complex, Asian yuzu seed extract, vitamins C, E, A, and D are all pitched as ingredients that will make me ageless.

Really?

And then, of course, there are all the highly scientific-sounding substances. Now I'm as gullible as the next person and would love nothing more than to find a skin cream that magically makes my skin dewy and young looking.

I've tried a lot of them over the years, and I've done so by willfully ignoring my natural skepticism. Should I be excited by poly-collagen/glycolic acid? Or a mineral skin osmoter? Can a product with 44 ingredients really protect my skin from free radicals? What are free radicals? And all the various "complexes" - alpha-hydroxy, anti-aging glyco-nutrient, rejuvenating shiitake...

I'm overwhelmed by the hype and confused by the choices. Counting just the specifically anti-aging ads in the magazine, there were 18 different companies, many with multiple products, representing almost 12 percent of all the ads. And I didn't even count the teeth-whitening or hair-brightening ads.

The one advertised treatment that I definitely know is good for skin is quitting cigarettes - that's the pitch that Nicoderm CQ was making - "Stop now and discover the results of healthier skin. Get serious."

In other words: if the increased risks of heart attack, stroke and lung cancer don't convince you, stop smoking because your skin will look better.

If an appeal to vanity is what it takes to help people quit smoking, I'm all for it. But that ad reminded me that what counts in the skin game probably isn't so much what we put on it, but what we don't put in our bodies. Less is really more.