Chocoholics, assemble! Someone has invented anti-ageing chocolate bars and they sound too good to be true.
Now, you can carry on enjoying your sweet cacao treats without worrying about the inevitable passage of time and the ageing process as you were, because some ex-Cambridge University scientists say so.
Introducing: Esthechoc – the 38-calorie chocolate bar promising to cure you of your perfectly natural wrinkles and make you look years younger than you actually are, should it float your boat.
The 7.5g bar of ‘anti-ageing’ chocolate contains the antioxidant astaxanthin – commonly found in salmon – which developers say can change the skin of a 50 to 60-year-old into someone in their 20s or 30s.
Tests showed, after four weeks of eating the anti-ageing chocolate every day, volunteers had less evidence of inflammation in their blood and increased blood supply to skin tissue.
The website appears to suggest eating Esthecho could make you look this this:
Creator Dr Ivan Petyaev, a former researcher at Cambridge University, and founder of biotech firm Lycotec, told the Telegraph:
We’re using the same antioxidant that keeps goldfish gold and flamingos pink. In clinical trials we saw that inflammation in the skin starting to go down and the tissues began to benefit.
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. So we’ve improved the skin’s physiology. People using it claimed that their skin was better and we can see that the product is working to slow down ageing.
You can watch how it works in the promotional footage below:
According to its brochure Esthechoc is for ‘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.’
No mention of chocolate connoisseurs like you and me, then… Which is perhaps irrelevant anyway as some scientists are not convinced?
Naveed Sattar, Professor of Metabolic Medicine at Glasgow University, called for more clinical trials to validate the ‘ridiculously strong’ claims made by the company.
Sattar continued:
There may be biological reasons to think some of the compounds may benefit some processes linked to ageing and disease but on the other hand, eating too much chocolate means more calories, which means obesity so the net effect is never clear cut.
These food claims need to be backed up with trials to have any genuine credibility. Such trials are glaring by their absence so all such health claims are unfounded.
Regardless, Esthechoc doesn’t come cheap and is exclusively sold at high-end retails with a price tag of around £40.
Think I’ll stick to Twirls to be honest.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.