Growing up, my brother and I both knew that eating chocolate caused an acne breakout. Within hours of eating it, we’d have pimples. It was like clockwork.
But practically everyone insisted we were wrong. Lots of confident friends would say “but such and such a study proves you are wrong!”. Well smarty pants, I don’t need a scientific study to prove that which I already know to be true.
Tonight I did some online digging, and found that it was related to some terrible old study done in 1969 where they gave 65 acne patients chocolate bars and placebo chocolate bars and found no difference in breakouts. The placebo bar still had a ton of sugar and fat in it and these were literally patients with truly terrible acne problems, not someone who otherwise had no acne, but broke out with some spots whenever they ate chocolate. So basically, the study didn’t say much about the effects of chocolate on people whose acne was specifically triggered by chocolate.
A 2016 study found the opposite, that dark chocolate actually worsened acne, specifically in men with acne-prone skin. A double-blind 2014 study using plain cocoa capsules found the same. The mechanism seems to be that chocolate spikes insulin, which raises IGF-1, which turns up your oil production and inflammation, which causes the acne breakouts.
It’s nice to finally have evidence to backup what I knew intuitively.
References
- Fulton JE, Plewig G, Kligman AM. Effect of chocolate on acne vulgaris. JAMA. 1969;210(11):2071-2074. europepmc.org/article/MED/4243053
- Vongraviopap S, Asawanonda P. Dark chocolate exacerbates acne. Int J Dermatol. 2016;55(5):587-591. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26711092
- Caperton C, Block S, Viera M, Keri J, Berman B. Double-blind, placebo-controlled study assessing the effect of chocolate consumption in subjects with a history of acne vulgaris. J Clin Aesthet Dermatol. 2014;7(5):19-23. europepmc.org/articles/PMC4025515