Dark Chocolate: Effect on Ageing Skin and How to Choose The Right One
As the awareness on healthy diet to achieve healthier skin rises, foods are identified into groups, foods that accelerate skin ageing, and that avoid ageing. Among the anti-ageing foods, dark chocolate is one of them.
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The Effect of Dark Chocolate on Ageing Skin
Chocolate is rich in cocoa flavonoids which have clinically significant benefits on skin health and appearance. Flavans are one of the subgroups divided typically from flavonoids. Forming complexes with salivary proteins, flavanols, a flavans subgroup, are responsible for the bitterness of cocoa, and are the biggest source of flavonoids in cocoa. The main flavanols found in cocoa are catechin, epicatechin, and procyanidins. They provide the majority of antioxidant activity in its products. Antioxidants offer a number of different beneficial outcomes, including improvements in appearance of the skin and protection of the skin from sun damage. Among various types of chocolate, dark chocolate has a high level of average total flavanol content.
Giving positive benefits on protection from sun damage and skin condition, results of studies on cocoa consumption have shown cocoa flavanols’ effect on improving skin. In 2015, Yoon and colleagues found that consumption of cocoa flavanols had positive effects on facial wrinkles and elasticity. They came up with that cocoa flavanol supplement may contribute to the prevention of the progress of photo-ageing.
Apart from reducing wrinkles and improving elasticity, dark chocolate is rich in antioxidants which have several major anti-inflammatory effects, including reduction in inflammation, redness, and swelling. This can be beneficial for individuals with inflammatory skin condition, such as acne or rosacea.
How to Choose a Dark Chocolate
Leventhal suggested a few requirements for dark chocolate to enhance skin anti-ageing. The chocolate should contain a few ingredients only, including chocolate liquor or cocoa, a small amount of sugar, and cocoa butter to produce. The chocolate should be higher in cocoa, over 70%. It should never contain milk and never be “alkali processed” or ”Dutch-processed” since this deteriorates its antioxidant ability.
Sugar should not be the first ingredient of the chocolate you choose. This is because high consumption of sugar lowers the maintenance of repairable collagen fibres and accelerates skin ageing. It might also increase the production of sebum that can make the skin become oily, largen the pore size, and increase frequency of acne breakout.
Potential Risk
Despite of the fact that dark chocolate offers benefits to ageing skin, potential riskful elements such as sugar, fat and calories are still contained in it. Thus, it is best to enjoy it in moderation. To know the portion of dark chocolate you can eat per day, individuals should ask and refer to nutritionists who are experts in healthy diets.
Conclusion
Dark chocolate provides positive effects on ageing skin, including improvements in appearance of the skin such as facial wrinkles and elasticity, protection of the skin from sun damage, and anti-inflammatory effects. It is important to select the right dark chocolate as mischoosing chocolate that is high in harmful ingredients like sugar could bring opposite effects and speed up skin ageing. Individuals should consult and seek suggestions from nutritionists to find out which dark chocolate is suitable to eat and how much can be eaten.
