If we add together the amount of television broadcasting time taken up by advertisements selling substances for filtering ultraviolet radiation, for protecting the skin and enhancing its beauty, it would come to hours and hours. In these, it is often stated that the product’s positive features have been confirmed by the expert opinion of dermatologists and scientific data. These, nevertheless, cannot generally be found  in the scientific literature.

The skin-protecting effect of chocolate, however, truly have been tested using quite modern methods, and the results were released, in June of 2006, in one of the leading international journals of nutritional science. The women being examined by the German research team drank, every day for three months, either flavanol-rich or low-flavanol drinks containing chocolate powder. Carefully selected and defined areas of skin were “suntanned” regularly with precise dosages of radiation. The reddening of the skin caused by the ultraviolet light was reduced by 15-25% in the group drinking chocolate drinks with a high level of flavanol, while the skin of those treated with low-flavanol drinks burned unpleasantly.

The effect on the high flavanol-consumption group also made it clear both that the skin’s blood flow had increased, and that its water content was greater, relative to the other group. The chocolate drink had made the skin of the test group silkier and more supple.

Dark chocolate, whose cocoa content is at least 50% ­­– but the higher, the better – contains not only flavanols, but all kinds of other things that our systems need: iron, calcium, potassium, as well as vitamins A, B, C and E. And something else as well: theobromine, which many know as a relative of caffeine. The word „theobromine” is Greek for „food of the gods”: it has a refreshing effect, and the improvement in mood we feel when we eat chocolate can be attributed in part to the theobromine content. But it has yet another interesting effect as well: it is quite a powerful cough suppressant.

Scientists in London conducted a prominent test, in which volunteers took capsules whose contents were unknown to them: in one week the capsules contained the powerful cough suppressant codeine, another week theobromine, and a third week an innocuous placebo. Coughing was triggered by sniffing a pepper agent. The codeine did a fine job of blocking the coughing spasms, but the 33% theobromine in the chocolate proved even more effective.

This means that, if your child has a cough, you can treat him or her with approximately three decagrams of plain chocolate more safely and effectively than you can with any of the various cough syrups, or with medications containing codeine, whose particular side effects you would then have to contend with. The London scientists gave double this dosage to adults, that is, the theobromine equivalent to six decagrams of chocolate was adequately effective.

Budapest, 25 August 2006

Dr Lajos Matos – Dr Margit Lengyel