Paris, France — Most people eat chocolate for Easter. But it also turns out that chocolate (read dark chocolate here), filled with iron, magnesium, flavonols, zinc and copper, is excellent at reducing damage from free radicals and a formidable ingredient in beauty products. Twenty years ago the family-owned house of Bernard Cassière imagined a unique beauty treatment, a holistic one at that, an anti-stress care with a line of beauty products and treatments revolving around chocolate, real chocolate made by an Italian chocolate maker based in the central French small city of Brive. The house’s star product is the Chocolate Fondu Mask loaded with cacao (unprocessed chocolate) and its polyphenols and anti-free radical properties bringing fast relief and regeneration to dry, damaged and stressed out skin. 

Just like any other mask it is brushed onto the skin and left for 45 minutes before being rinsed off. Another product is the Chocolate Mousse Mask which is left on for just 12 minutes. And for daily care there is the the Chocolate Nutriprotective Tinted Cream. These are phyto products, phyto meaning of a plant or relating to plants. All of the products from the house are made in France and the brand is part of Sothys, a leading nature-based beauty brand in France founded by Bernard Mas in the central French region of the Corrèze. The house of Bernard Cassière offers some 200 different products available in 450 beauty institutes. 

Chocolate is made from cocoa butter which is also known as theobroma oil which is also used to make ointments, beauty products and some pharmaceutical products. It has a smooth velvety texture and excellent moisturizing qualities and has been used to heal the skin for millennia. Already in ancient Mesoamerica cocoa beans were regarded as sacred by the Mayans and Aztecs who believed that the cacao tree possessed divine properties. They derived cocoa butter from the beans and used it for its medicinal properties and its ability to improve the skin. And to think that it seems like millennia that we have been told eating chocolate causes acne. ©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette. https://www.bcparis.com/gb/