Who wins in the battle between diet and adult acne? Dietary behavior or acne?
Among teenagers, people often speculate that dietary decisions may trigger acne. This is not false entirely. In fact, particular foods may stimulate inflammation throughout the body, thus causing acne breakouts. It is also true that dietary behavior may impact hormones, which can worsen acne. For instance: milk and other foods with higher sugar concentrations can increase insulin levels, intervening with other hormones related to the skin. Although there is an interconnected relationship between diet and acne, no consensus has been reached that acne can be cleared through diet changes.
However, results in studies among adults suggest otherwise: dietary behavior may contribute to adult acne.
A relatively new study from the medical journal JAMA Dermatology has shown that there is a correlation between acne development and the consumption of high-fat foods (including milk and meat), sugary foods and drinks, combinations of high-fat and high-sugar foods.
More specifically, it was found that participants with acne currently were 54% more likely to combine these two types of food compared to their counterparts with no acne.
Those who consumed greater amounts of high-fat, high-sugar foods were more prone to the incidence of current acne. For instance: "compared with those with no history of acne, those with acne at the time of the survey were 76% more likely to report drinking at least five glasses of milk in the previous day, more than twice as likely to report consuming at least five servings of high-sugar drinks in the previous day, and eight times more likely to report consuming “a complete meal of fatty and sugary products” in the previous day" (Harvard Health).
As opposed to current acne, past acne was developed with a linkage to fast foods and snacks. As for a common snack favorite chocolate, neither dark nor milk chocolate were correlated with acne.
While the study suggests these results, there may be biases that have been introduced. For example, recall bias and confounders might be present and prompt researchers in a misleading direction.
As a result, this study only goes as far as to proving correlation, not causation. In other words, among adults, diets made of fatty and sugary foods did not cause adult acne.
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