If it seems too good to be true
The Herald (from the Daily Telegraph) has a story about a new high-antioxidant chocolate
Its makers claim it can change the underlying skin of a 50 to 60-year-old into that of someone in their 20s or 30s.
Actually, in an uncontrolled short-term trial in 400 people they say
“We used people in their 50s and 60s and in terms of skin biomarkers we found it had brought skin back to the levels of a 20 or 30-year-old
The target market is
“elegant, educated and affluent” city-dwelling women in their 30s and businessmen “to support their appearance in a stressful environment and on their business travels”.
or, in other words, people who would be willing to bore on about how young and beautiful their skin biomarkers are, in case you can’t tell by looking.
To be fair, there is independent expert comment (which is not entirely convinced). If you read right to the last sentence you get the real highlight:
Nutrition experts at UCL also warned that previous trials showed that astaxanthin worked better when applied directly to the face rather than ingested.
Updated to add: the story was also on Prime News, where they made explicit the point that this really has nothing to do with the chocolate. They could have put the astaxanthin in a pill, but they thought it would be more attractive if they put it in chocolate. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, etc,
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Can you imagine the dilemma of eating more and more chocolate to look younger – because we all know the desperation some women feel with age – knowing that you risk gaining weight. “Her skin looks 20 years younger but she’s put on so much weight.”
10 years ago