Poet's Corner

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"Not Just for Candy Anymore

We all know chocolate tastes good, and some of us even know that there are some healthy aspects of it. But did you know chocolate may also be able to help you look and smell good?

By Jeanie Davis

WebMD Medical News

Feb. 11, 2002 -- Like champagne on New Year's Eve, a heart-shaped box of bonbons is the quintessential symbol of Valentine's Day. We do crave the taste of le chocolat.

Amazingly, this melt-in-your-mouth indulgence is good for you. Who knew? There's copper in each and every bite, which helps plump up skin and gives it a more youthful look because it promotes collagen formation, according to the American Academy of Sciences. Chocolate is also full of antioxidants -- from copper and from catechins -- which battle heart disease and cancer.

Chocolate whips up the endorphins (the pleasure chemicals in your brain), as well as serotonin, an anti-depressant. Bite into a bonbon, and you're also getting a bit of caffeine -- that wonderfully all-purpose brain booster.

And if you're lactose intolerant, here's a special note: milk is more digestible when you add a healthy dose of chocolate.

But bonbons do have their downside -- that unattractive fat content. To help us indulge our passion sans those extra pounds, the beauty industry has spun some magic.

Teasing, tantalizing eau du cacao is the essence of fragrances and shampoos, lip icings, and toe creams.

And just imagine this: A long soak in a whipped cocoa bath. A head-to-toe swathe of chocolate fondue. Maybe a body massage with chocolate oil. Or a cocoa butter scrub.

That's what you find at The Hotel Hershey -- where else?

The whipped cocoa bath: "It's our variation of the milk bath," says Jennifer Wayland-Smith, director of The Spa at The Hotel Hershey in Hershey, Pa. "For centuries, women have been taking milk baths to soften and soothe the skin. Milk has lactic acid in it, so it's an exfolliant. Cleopatra was famous for milk baths."

But the chocolate fondue wrap? It's a warm mud painted onto your body from neck to toe -- warm mud mixed with essence of cocoa, that is. "It looks and smells like melted chocolate," she tells WebMD.

The cocoa butter scrub is virtually a cookie recipe: pure cocoa butter (for moisturizing) mixed with oatmeal (an exfolliant) and sugar. Slathered on every inch of skin, it's a 20-minute treatment that leaves skin "very soft and smooth," she says.

Essence of the experience: "that comfort factor," says Wayland-Smith.

It also makes people, well, nuts for chocolate.

Whether it's made by Ghirardelli, Godiva, Cadbury, or your local chocolatier, le chocolat indeed conjures up pleasant emotions, even takes us back to childhood, to Mother's kitchen, whether we realize it or not, says Marcia Pelchat, PhD, a flavor psychologist at Monell Chemical Sciences Center in Philadelphia.

Vanilla scents have a similar effect, she tells WebMD. "It's that pudding type of smell."

Chocolate's complexity makes it an enduring favorite and a good mixer -- it blends well with fruits, nuts, and other flavors. That complexity also makes chocolate a popular fragrance, Pelchat adds. "That aroma, that taste, just can't be duplicated. There are no good synthetic chocolates."

When you respond to that chocolate smell, it's with an ancient part of the brain that has survived evolution. "It's your 'reptile brain' -- the smell brain -- the part of the brain that is intimately involved with emotion," she explains.

"Reptiles probably relied on olfaction for the same reason anybody else would -- to find foods, avoid danger, find mates," Pelchat says. "So [smells] tend to be important in emotion and learning and memory."

If you're trying to kick the chocolate-eating habit, it won't be easy, she tells WebMD. Eau du cacao is so alluring that it's hard to resist, at least in those first few weeks of deprivation.

Stick to your guns, she says, if you're really serious about saying good riddance to Godivas. "If you stick it out for a long time, craving will decline. After that, the mere scent of chocolate won't be enough to lure you back -- it'll take "the full sensory experience" -- an in-your-face chocolate intervention.

"That's the cruelty of chocolate," says Pelchat. "It's so easy, once you have that one little bite. You're right back where you started."

But can rubbing cocoa butter do great things for your skin? That's another matter, says Bernett Johnson, MD, professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I've known patients to use cocoa butter for everything from moisturizing to lightening up dark marks," he tells WebMD. Your skin likely won't break out in zits. "I've never seen anyone have a reaction to it. But as a moisturizer, it's probably not any better than Crisco, lard, or butter. You can put that on your body just as well."

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/1687.51320