Is Acne Fed by the Western Diet?

Dec. 19, 2002 -- The scourge of teenaged life -- acne -- may result from the very diet that feeds it, suggests a new study that flies in the face of three decades worth of conventional thinking on the cause of facial blemishes.

And this time, it's not just isolated items such as chocolate or pizza being implicated. It's the entire typical western diet, a gamut of highly refined starchy and sugary foods that not only includes those "junk" foods but also the very breads, cereals, and carbohydrates that are the cornerstone of the USDA Food Pyramid.

My comment: What people with acne have been telling their dermatologists all along may be true: that diet affects it. Scientists have found that acne is extremely rare among people who eat a traditional hunter-gatherer diet their whole lives.