Does dark chocolate tighten skin?

Talking about skin firmness, dark chocolate can have a mixed effect. Glycation, sugar and fat accumulation all have a negative effect on skin firmness, while flavanols actually support skin firmness (polyphenols are very well researched regarding their positive effect on collagen and elastin).

lipotherapeia.com - Cocoa flavanols, dark chocolate, cellulite and your health

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Is 70% dark chocolate healthy? Is a food that 26% saturated fat healthy?

100g of 70% dark chocolate also typically contains 25g saturated fat and 42g overall fat. This is 2.5x times the saturated fat content and 2x times the overall fat percentage of a fatty rib eye steak. Yep, that’s true. And the steak will give you 25g of protein, while dark chocolate will give you six cubes of sugar instead with that fat. Grim but true… Of course those two foods are used for two different purposes, but the point remains the same.

“Have only two squares”

Because of the high sugar and overall saturated fat and calorie content, all the studies that recommend eating dark chocolate as a heart-friendly food, they do so only for an intake of 1-2 small chocolate squares. In this way, people will theoretically receive the benefit from the healthful polyphenols / flavanols contained in dark chocolate, without suffering the consequences of consuming large amounts of sugar, saturated fat and calories. The only problem with this advice is that you don’t take any meaningful amount of flavanols/polyphenols.

Dark chocolate nutrition facts

Before we go into further detail regarding the issues raised above (flavanol content, heart health, glycation etc), let’s have a look at the exact macronutrients provided by dark chocolate. For this article I have used as an example, a quality dark chocolate: Green & Black's Organic 70% Dark Chocolate. The values below are for 100g, i.e. one chocolate bar:

Energy: 580 calories

Fat: 42g Of which saturates: 25g

Carbohydrates: 36g Of which sugars: 29g

Fibre: 10g

Protein: 9.1g

Dark chocolate = 42% fat + 30% sugar (doesn’t sound that healthy anymore) So what do we learn from the above? That dark chocolate contains around ~30% sugar plus another ~5% carbs contained in the actual cocoa solids. But also equally importantly, dark chocolate is 42% fat by weight, so you get a fat + sugar double whammy. To make things worse, about 60% of that fat (i.e. 26% of the whole chocolate) is saturated, known to stimulate fat accumulation and insulin resistance. Now, some people may say that saturated fat is not as bad as it was previously thought to be, and that may indeed apply for followers of a strict ketogenic diet. However, chocolate is not a keto food - even the 100% chocolate isn’t. In fact, combined with sugar, saturated fat is as bad as it is widely accepted to be - and then some more. Let’s not fool ourselves here. Hundreds of studies have proven again and again that saturated fat is fattening, LDL-cholesterol forming, artery-clogging and causing insulin resistance, especially when combined with sugar and/or starch (starch is what people refer to as “carbs”). So, to put things right and to bust the myth about the healthiness of dark chocolate, we can simply say that 71% of it is made of unhealthy, fattening staff, mainly saturated fat and sugar.

What about the “antioxidants” in dark chocolate? Cocoa flavanols in dark chocolate.

Now, one would say that at least the insulin resistance effect can be counteracted by the insulin-sensitising effect of the “antioxidants” contained in dark chocolate, namely a group of polyphenols called flavanols. Cocoa flavanols are also supposed to improve cardiovascular health and help preserve collagen. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), dark chocolate contains about 109 mg flavanols per 100g. If the cocoa in the chocolate is “dutched”, i.e. alkalinised to make it darker and more appealing, then the flavanol level drops to 53 mg per 100g of chocolate. To put this into perspective, the EU allows health claims to be made for cocoa products containing flavanols only for a dose of 200mg or higher. The claim is: “Cocoa flavanols help maintain the elasticity of blood vessels, which contributes to normal blood flow”. This simply means that to get some tangible cardiovascular benefits you need to consume about 200g of dark chocolate (the good type, not the dutched one). Anything less is still welcome, but too weak and too slow to make any real difference. Now, 200g of dark chocolate would provide you with 1,200 calories, 60g of saturated fat (basically eight heaped tablespoons of lard, but hey, it’s vegan in origin) and 60g of sugar, i.e. 12 teaspoonfuls of sugar. It doesn’t take a nutritional genius to understand that to get some good cardiovascular / insulin sensitising / collagen preserving benefits you need to first swallow 12 teaspoons of sugar and 4 tablespoons of vegan lard, clogging your arteries, filling up your skin fat cells (i.e. cellulite) and reducing insulin sensitivity all over your body. Let’s get real here. Polyphenols with low sugar and zero fat (as in blueberries for example), are totally different to polyphenols with plenty of saturated fat and sugar. The whole benefit of polyphenols in dark chocolate is undermined by the heaps fat and sugar contained in it.

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The little benefit that studies on dark chocolate show, is exactly that: a little benefit. It won’t make any significant difference to heart health and it’s just a minor statistically significant result in studies, not real-life significant.

High flavanol cocoa powder, dark chocolate and artery health

The only way to benefit from the - indeed very healthful - qualities of flavanols contained in cocoa/cacao is to consume an unsweetened high-flavanol cocoa powder mixed in milk, vegetable milk, protein shake or smoothie. That can indeed make a difference, as it can provide you with 50mg of flavanols per 5g teaspoonful. So with four teaspoonfuls in your drink you can get 200mg of flavanols. Yes, it’s difficult to trace a high quality high flavanol cocoa powder, but that’s the only “dark chocolate” I would call healthy. Personally, I do take high flavanol cocoa powder and I indeed experience very measurable benefits in terms of arterial ‘flow mediated dilation’, as it is called (I have medical equipment that can measure this).

(* Flow mediated dilation measures the degree of elasticity of your arteries.)

A quality raw cocoa defatted powder contains about 0.5% flavanols (5g of the stuff will give you 25mg of flavanols), while-high flavanol cocoa powder contains about 1%.

Dark chocolate and glycation

Sugar is known to cause glycation. Glycation is the damage of proteins, including skin and blood vessel proteins, and is commonly accompanied by inflammation and fibrosis. Glycation is a major cause of ageing and cellulite and it is recently implicated in indirectly causing weight gain too. So given that dark chocolate contains plenty of sugar (typically 30%), we can easily infer that dark chocolate can cause glycation and therefore ageing, skin looseness and cellulite. Again, the flavanols in dark chocolate should theoretically be partially protective against glycation (nothing is proven about this combination yet), but the end result would most probably be a net increase in glycation. You don’t need to increase glycation with sugar first and then try to reduce it with polyphenols. It’s futile.

Does chocolate cause cellulite? Dark chocolate, high flavanol cocoa and cellulite.

Given that poor blood circulation is a cellulite factor you would expect that cocoa flavanols would benefit cellulite. However, as mentioned above, the typical dark chocolate contains 42% fat and 30% sugar, which actually can DIRECTLY cause cellulite by inflating fat cells with fat and also indirectly by causing glycation. Dark chocolate provides valuable antioxidants too, which offer INDIRECT protection from cellulite, but these are just not enough to undo the damage fat and sugar cause.

So, no, dark chocolate is not good for cellulite either.

On the other hand, high-flavanol cocoa, without fat and sugar, can inhibit fat accumulation, boost circulation, fight inflammation and support skin firmness.

Dark chocolate, high flavanol cocoa and skin firmness

Talking about skin firmness, dark chocolate can have a mixed effect.

Glycation, sugar and fat accumulation all have a negative effect on skin firmness, while flavanols actually support skin firmness (polyphenols are very well researched regarding their positive effect on collagen and elastin). Again, the benefits of flavanols in skin firmness are undermined by sugar and overall calories, so I would not call dark chocolate beneficial for skin firmness. On the other hand, I would wholeheartedly recommend high flavanol cocoa as an anti-ageing / skin firming food.

Dark chocolate, fibre and protein

Dark chocolate indeed contains a good amount of fibre (10%) to help you go to the loo, but then again vegetables, fruits, chia seeds and flax seeds have way more fibre and little in the way of calories. In terms of protein, dark chocolate is a low protein, high-fat, high-sugar food, containing exactly the same amount of protein as white bread (about 10%) but a lot more fat and plenty of sugar. I think that says it all.

Milk chocolate nutrition facts

Milk chocolate, typically contains the following (data from Green & Black’s Organic Milk Chocolate):

Energy: 561 calories (a bit less than dark choc)

Fat: 36 g (a bit less than dark choc) Of which saturates: 22g (a bit less than dark choc) Carbohydrates: 48g (a LOT more than dark choc) Of which sugars: 46g (a LOT more than dark choc)

Fibre: 2.3g (MUCH less than dark choc)

Protein: 6.1g (even less than dark choc)

Milk chocolate: even more sugar (around 50%)

So what does the panel above shows us?

That half of milk chocolate is pure sugar: 9 cubes of sugar per 100g bar of chocolate. Then another third of it is pure fat (one fifth of the bar being hard saturated fat). And there is not much fibre or protein left in it, in relation to dark chocolate.

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Also, milk chocolate has one-third to one-half the antioxidants of dark chocolate PLUS it contains highly processed milk which is a cause of intolerance for hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people around the world. All in all, milk chocolate is an unhealthy, rich dessert. There is no notion of healthiness in milk chocolate. It may taste nice and, if made by a good manufacturer, it may be of high quality, but nevertheless it is a high quality unhealthy food.

White chocolate nutrition facts

White chocolate, typically contains the following nutrients (data from Green and Black’s Organic White Chocolate):

Energy: 581 calories (same as dark choc)

Fat: 38g (a bit less than dark choc) Of which saturates: 23g

Carbohydrates: 51g (a LOT more than dark choc) Of which sugars: 51g (a whole LOT more than dark choc)

Fibre: 0.1g (virtually non-existent)

Protein: 7.9g (a bit less than dark choc)

White chocolate: same as milk chocolate, i.e. 50% sugar, but with no fibre whatsoever The panel above shows us that white chocolate is similar to milk chocolate in all respects except from the fact that there is no fibre in it and no antioxidants / flavanols whatsoever.

So it is even more of an “unhealthy candy” than milk chocolate.

What about 100% dark chocolate, surely i must be amazing for you, because it’s pure cocoa, right?

That’s what I thought 20 years ago.

I used to buy a nice, expensive, high quality, 100% dark chocolate, thinking that I will get antioxidants, pure cocoa, some protein, some fibre and no sugar, to keep me going during the day when I had no time for a proper meal or snack between appointments.

And I was wrong. The 100% dark chocolate:

did NOT kill my cravings

did NOT pacify my appetite

did NOT make me feel good about myself

It was just a heavy food, a burden to my system and at the end of the day I felt “yuck” and with an overpowering need to have a real healthy snack or meal, not a fake “healthy” snack. The reason I felt like that can be explained by looking at the table below.

100% dark chocolate nutrition facts

The data below are from Montezuma’s 100% dark chocolate bar:

Energy: 600 calories (a bit more than 70% dark choc)

Fat: 54g (quite a lot more than 70% dark choc) Of which saturates: 33g (more than 70% dark choc) Carbohydrates: 8g (almost one fifth of 70% dark choc) Of which sugars: 0.1g (virtually non existent)

Fibre: 17g

Protein: 12g

100% dark chocolate: zero sugar, but still a food containing 54% fat plus some carbs still Logically, an 100% chocolate bar should have 40% more flavanols than a 70% chocolate bar. As flavanol content is not something you find on chocolate bar labels, this is not an exact number, as different cocoa varieties and manufacturing processes can affect the level of flavanols in the chocolate. But let’s assume that 100% dark chocolate, containing 42% more cocoa mass, has 42% more antioxidants. Again, this is of little benefit to health in relation to the 33% saturated and the 54% overall fat content. If you want to benefit of flavanols for your arteries, skin or cellulite, just have a high flavanol cocoa powder with the beverage of your choice. This would contain 200% more flavanols than 70% dark chocolate - not the mere 40% more that 100% dark chocolate contains.

Flavanol content of different kinds of chocolate and cocoa

According to the USDA:

100g of commercial cocoa powder contains 201 mg of flavanols (0.2%)

100g of commercial dutched (alkalinised) cocoa powder contains 93 mg of flavanols (0.1%) 100g of milk chocolate contains JUST 15(!) mg of flavanols (no benefit here, whatsoever) (0.015%)

100g of dark chocolate contains 109 mg of flavanols (0.1%)

100g of dutched dark chocolate contains 53 mg of flavanols (0.05%)

100g of unsweetened (presumably 100% dark) chocolate contains 208 mg of flavanols (0.2%) On the other hand 100g of high flavanol cocoa powder contains 1,000 (!) mg of flavanols, with very little in the way of fat or carbs (1% flavanols) Of course those numbers are not set in stone and are averages from commercial products, but they show a general trend.

lipotherapeia.com - Cocoa flavanols, dark chocolate, cellulite and your health

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