How Does Chocolate Affect the Skin?

What’s your go-to comfort for when the chips are down? A glass of wine? Bubble bath and a book? A phone call to your mum? What about food-wise? Your local takeaway? Something more indulgent? Chocolate?

For many of us, the answer is always chocolate. Even if the answer isn’t chocolate, we’ll still try chocolate to see if it is the answer. Most of us love chocolate, adore it even. Stress, upset, worry, boredom - they’re all made at least temporarily better by eating chocolate.

Maybe you love a chocolate bar just as much, and you eat it to help make unwanted emotions disappear. Or maybe you just like chocolate, well, because? Maybe you just like to eat chocolate, end of. We certainly do.

Can Eating Chocolate Cause Acne?

However, what if chocolate consumption was somehow affecting the health and appearance of our skin? It’s the age old, old wives’ tale isn’t it, from childhood that chocolate causes spots and acne. But is this true? Is chocolate bad for your skin? Does eating it make you break out?

Not necessarily. What about sugar, and dairy? Can they cause our skin to break out? Can food allergies affect our skin? Quite possibly, yes.

So let’s take a look at the key ingredients in chocolate, and one by one, consider what they could be doing to our skin. Can chocolate really cause acne pimples and spots? First though, we’ll begin with the good news, by looking at one of the huge skin benefits to eating chocolate…

The Good Bits: Antioxidants and the Benefits of Chocolate

Chocolate, or rather, cacao, contains antioxidants. Cacao is the raw form of chocolate as it’s extracted from the cacao seeds from the Theobroma cacao tree. We like to think of it as chocolate before all the sugar, fat and fun has been added to it.

(That said, a spoonful of cacao in a protein smoothie is really good. See our article, Eating Greens to Benefit Your Skin for more detail.)

What’s the Difference Between Cacao and Cocoa?

Note that we're using the word ‘cacao’ not ‘cocoa’. Cacao is the unrefined, unprocessed product that comes straight from the cacao seed that’s found in natural cacao powder and other, more natural products. It’s unsweetened and has a fairly bitter taste, but is still reminiscent of chocolate. (Albeit dark versions rather than milk chocolate.)

Cocoa, on the other hand, tends to refer to the powder that’s produced by processing cacao beans and mixing it with sugars and fats to make cocoa products such as powder and the types of chocolate we all know and love.

Because cacao comes straight from the plant it’s full of beneficial plant based compounds, including antioxidants called flavonoid phenolics. Whilst this sounds like something you’d find in a chemistry lab, these are very good for us indeed. They’re similar to the beneficial flavonoids found in green tea and red wine.

What Are Antioxidants and Free Radicals in Dark Chocolate?

Antioxidants help to neutralise damaging, unstable molecules called free radicals. Free radicals move around the body looking for spare electrons to help stabilise themselves. They ‘steal’ these electrons from unassuming oxygen atoms in turn, turning these into unstable free radicals and so a constant chain reaction is happening within the body.

Free radicals are unavoidable since they’re produced as a by-product of normal biological functions such as breathing and digestion. They’re also introduced into the body by breathing in pollution and environmental toxins, smoking and eating a diet high in processed, high fat, high salt, high sugar foods.

The consequence of free radicals is cellular and DNA damage, which can lead to, amongst other things, skin damage and skin ageing. It can also cause acne breakouts and worsen acne prone skin if you have a history of acne vulgaris.

So consuming an antioxidant rich diet helps to keep these nasty free radicals at bay. The most antioxidant rich foods are fruits and vegetables. But dark chocolate and cacao also contain free radical busting antioxidants. Hurrah!

Chocolate and Acne Breakouts: is Chocolate Really to Blame?

Generally, dark chocolate and chocolate that’s from more ‘natural’ brands that have less sugar and no dairy products added tend to contain higher concentrations of antioxidants. Also in the good camp is the fact that this kind of chocolate also provides certain minerals that are important for our health. These include iron, magnesium and potassium.

Just keep in mind that chocolate that does contain refined sugars and dairy is also calorific, so a few squares a day should be our limit.

For more information on how free radicals can cause skin ageing and how antioxidants can help, read our article, What Are Antioxidants in Skincare.

Now, sadly, the downside to eating regular chocolate on a regular basis...

Diet and Acne: What’s the Impact of Sugar on the Skin?

Sugar is, quite rightly, demonised as a food. Consume too much, and we run the risk of developing obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. This is because sugar is an inflammatory food which can lead to chronic inflammation.

Chronic inflammation can then lead to chronic inflammatory diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis and certain forms of dementia.

Not only this, but inflammation can cause skin conditions like acne, rosacea and eczema to become worse.

So for this reason, it could be beneficial for you if you have existing acne prone skin to really consider your sugar intake and avoid the foods that you think might be causing your acne. You might also want to consider the impact of a high carb diet on your skin since complex carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars.

Can Dairy Products Trigger Acne?

For many of us, our hormones have a direct effect on our skin. Or rather, when our hormones are out of balance, they’ll cause our acne prone skin to break out. Puberty, periods, pregnancy, breastfeeding, the perimenopause and the menopause will all mean that our skin misbehaves. Dairy products by default contain hormones from the cows (or sheep or goats) that produce milk and the milk that then becomes other dairy products such as butter, cheese and yogurt.

Therefore, consuming dairy products can cause our skin to react, and this is all due to the hormone, insulin like growth factor 1, or IGF-1. Consuming IGF-1 in dairy products triggers the production of another hormone, insulin. This can then lead to inflammation and excess sebum production, the oily substance naturally produced by the skin.

As we know from above, inflammation can lead to stressed out skin. Excess sebum causes the skin to become oily, with pores blocked with dead skin cells and debris, and more chance of acne breakouts and spots.

We recently wrote a detailed article on Dairy Alternatives for Sensitive Skin which is well worth a read for more detail on choosing dairy free alternatives, including chocolate.

Can the Fat Content of Dairy Affect Your Skin Health?

Dairy products found in chocolate don’t just affect the skin due to their natural IGF-1 content. There is a suggestion that the natural fats found in milk chocolate may lead to a worsening of acne symptoms and cause pimples, but this is still unproven.

Interestingly, studies have shown that skimmed, low fat milk can lead to worse acne symptoms than full fat milk. This could be down to the fact that we might consume more skimmed milk than full fat, believing that it’s better for us. But in fact, we’re consuming more dairy animal hormones that could be upsetting our acne-prone skin.

There is also evidence that fatty foods can cause acne around the mouth, due to the oils laying on our skin and blocking our pores. There is no evidence that chocolate causes this (unless we're really messy eaters) and therefore we don't think fat in chocolate is a skin concern.

It is however a calorie concern, (as chocolate also contains calories, and lots of them) if we’re actively choosing to consume a low calorie or a calorie controlled diet.

How Much Chocolate is too Much Chocolate?

Since we’re all individuals, each one of us will have a different tolerance level to eating highly sugary or fatty chocolate and how much it might have an impact on the health of our skin and aggravate acne.

As all health professionals and dieticians will tell us, chocolate is a ‘treat’ food and should be consumed as such. This means limiting it to perhaps once or twice a week. If we know that chocolate is one of our trigger foods that causes acne breakouts or skin condition flare ups, then sadly we’ll have to limit it further.

But for a chocolate fix (albeit without the sweetness), adding a teaspoon of cacao to a protein smoothie (we make ours using hemp powder to avoid the dairy content of most protein shakes that contains whey and oat milk) is a great idea. You get all the benefits of the antioxidants, minus the potential inflammation and skin flare ups that are linked with acne and chocolate.

Sönd Skin Care for Clear Skin

We all have our vices and we all know that sometimes, the lure of what we fancy is quite simply, ok. No matter what the consequences. The evidence for whether chocolate actually will cause breakouts, as you can see from this article, isn't an easy yes or no question.

The formation of acne is complicated and down to many factors. The link between chocolate and and common skin complaints such as increased acne outbreaks might be good or bad. Research suggests that chocolate may increase acne if we're prone to it, but for you, you may find other foods cause acne lesions. The link between acne and chocolate is nuanced for sure.

So, for clearer skin no matter what and to give our skin the best chance of defence against our desires (even if they are foods that might cause acne), we need to be using skincare products that are respectful of our skin's needs. That’s why we developed our range of alkalising skincare products.

Our hero ingredient is our unique silica salt complex that encourages healthy skin. It nourishes the skin deep within the lower levels to encourage healthy cell regeneration and hydration, and tackle skin problems at their source, protecting the skin.

So if you haven’t tried our amazing skincare range, then why not try us out today? It could be the best thing you ever did for your skin, and that definitely deserves a chocolate based celebration!

Sources

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21967574

https://www.verywellhealth.com/does-chocolate-cause-acne-15519

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cacao-vs-cocoa

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)65262-2/fulltext

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/apr/07/foodanddrink.uk1

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200218161720.htm

https://www.healthline.com/health/does-chocolate-cause-acne#What-we-know-about-diet-and-acne

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3481796/

https://www.verywellhealth.com/does-drinking-milk-cause-acne-15684

This article is not meant to treat or diagnose. Please visit your doctor for advice about any health concerns you may have.