Guest Author - Deborah Markus

Probably all of us grew up hearing that we shouldn't eat too much chocolate or we'd break out. Like we didn't have enough to worry about in that department.

Probably our parents meant well. Possibly they were just trying to keep all the chocolate to themselves by saying something that would keep us away from it even when they weren't around to defend it. Either way, the facts weren't on their side.

First, no evidence links chocolate to complexion problems. According to numerous sites, at least two formal scientific studies -- as well as a great many private ones attempted by individuals -- have been undertaken, and both came down soundly against chocolate as a complexion villain.

One study by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Department of Dermatology, divided test subjects in two groups. One group was given a sort of super chocolate to eat -- bars that contained almost ten times as much chocolate liquor as the same quantity of conventional chocolate. ("Chocolate liquor" has no alcohol; it's also known as "chocolate mass," and is the result of roasting, shelling, and grinding cacao beans.)

The other group was given a "placebo" bar that was made to taste like chocolate, but contained no actual cacao ingredients. The subjects were acne patients, and their acne wasn't affected one way or the other by consumption of chocolate (or the placebo, for that matter).

The other study took matters a step further. Eighty midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland were divided into groups, as in the Pennsylvania experiment. All the midshipmen had some degree of acne, but none of them suffered from severe outbreaks. As many variables in their lives as possible were controlled; but one group abstained completely from chocolate, while members of the other consumed at least three bars a day.

After four weeks, the midshipmen switched over, with the abstainers now partaking frequently of chocolate and those who had been consuming it avoiding it altogether for another four weeks. Careful examinations showed that neither chocolate consumption nor avoidance of the food had any impact, positive or negative, on the complexion of the test subjects.

Good enough news, that. But it gets better. Not only is chocolate not bad for your skin; it might even be good for it.

In a study too small to be, regrettably, anything but promising -- only 24 women participated -- German researchers gave of cocoa to their subjects every morning for about three months. Half the volunteers were given cocoa enriched with far more flavonoids -- naturally-occurring antioxidants -- than would ordinarily be found in a cup of cocoa. The others were given a comparatively weak dose of flavonoids in their cocoa.

The women who drank the flavonoid-rich cocoa every day were found to have skin that was less rough, less scaly, and moister than it was when the experiment started. The other subjects showed no change in skin quality.

What's more, the subjects whose complexion improved also showed less redness after exposure to UV light, as compared to their own reddening responses as recorded before the cocoa consumption began.

None of this should be taken as advice or permission to eat nothing but chocolate for the rest of your life. But you can take away, at least, one less reason to feel guilty about the chocolate you do consume.