We have known for years that chocolate doesn’t cause acne but this particular myth is taking a long time to die. When I was a resident dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, my colleagues and I believed the myth so strongly that we decided to use chocolate as a tool to examine how acne flares up. Dr. Albert Kligman, Dr. Gerd Plewig, and I requested some very special candy bars from the Association of Chocolate Manufacturers of America. We then chose sixty-five young people with acne and fed them two candy bars a day for a month hoping to make their acne flare up. The teenagers were delighted to indulge in this "sin." Unknown to them, half of the group were gorging on bars that contained ten times the usual amount of chocolate. The other half were given bars that looked and tasted the same but actually contained no chocolate. However, they did contain a great deal of vegetable fat which gave us a chance to see if fat would cause a problem. Both kinds of bars contained the same number of calories. Out of the sixty-five subjects, one got better, one got worse, and sixty-three remained the same. Obviously, neither the chocolate nor all that extra fat had exerted much effect on their acne. Other studies conducted since have yielded similar results. So why does the myth persist?
Some of you will insist on a stack of Bibles that when you go on a chocolate binge, you will break out the next day or a few days later. Your observations may be correct though your conclusions are not. Perhaps it is the anxiety attack that made you go on the chocolate binge in the first place that is showing up on your face days later. Obviously, if you really feel that chocolate flares you up, stop eating it. Chocolate is not a necessary food. Nevertheless, I can find no proof that chocolate has a detrimental effect on the average teenager. So, please don’t pass the chocolate "guilt trip" on to others.
The food myths don’t stop at chocolate. Next in line are french fries and other "greasy" foods. The notion that greasy food leads to greasy skin is based, I suppose, on the somewhat logical notion that the grease a person eats will somehow eventually travel out through the pores. It isn’t so. The oils ingested are broken down within the digestive system and have absolutely nothing to do with the oil (sebum) manufactured in the skin by the sebaceous glands. Come to think of it, such a conclusion is not logical at all. When a person eats broccoli does their hair grow out green and bushy? It seems that every food a teenager lusts after such as french fries, pizza, carbonated drinks, hotdogs and ketchup (to name a few) finds its way onto the "don’t eat" list for acne patients;
Dietary factors are neither the cause of nor the cure for acne. Yet plenty of acne sufferers have followed difficult diets for years. Some have nearly starved themselves or have become obsessive and neurotic in their eating habits in an attempt to clear their complexions but to no avail. For the most part, the food you eat has little to do with your acne. Diet is simply not the major factor it was once thought to be.
However, there are a few exceptions that we will list in Chapter 7. For now, we will alert just to the main offender, Iodine. If ingested in large amounts, Iodine can cause an acne flare up. If you take vitamin or mineral pills, look at the label. If it lists high levels of iodine or kelp (rich in iodine), throw them out.
While dietary considerations are relatively unimportant when it comes to acne, it is true that any diet that helps a body stay strong and healthy is, of course, also good for the skin. So in Chapter 14, we’ll give some eating guidelines that will perk up the body in general and thereby contribute to healthy skin.
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