Food is the hot new spa treatment - Now's the time to go to the spa. The days are grey, the weather's chilly, the scenery's dull, and the bustle of Christmas is just around the corner. What better way to spend a few hours than enfolded in the warm embrace of, oh, a body-smothering of chocolate?
Or if chocolate's not your thing, how about a facial of apple peels? Some energizing ginger? Or maybe a taste of vino is more to your liking.
Food is big business at spas, and we don't mean the salad some serve for lunch. We're talking about foods said to erase lines, resurface skin, firm sags and relax muscles.
Forget mud, algae, botanicals and chemicals with long, unpronounceable names. Instead, check out this selection from the "menu" of treatments at some spas:
- Fruit cocktail facial;
- Parsley and cucumber eye treatment;
- Chocolate and roses pedicure;
- Grape crush exfoliation;
- Nutty cream body scrub with cognac;
- Cherry body massage for two;
- Vanilla honey chocolate hydrotherapy
"I was blown away by the results I could get from using food-based ingredients," says Oresta Korbutiak, owner of Oresta Organics in Ottawa, whose facial offerings include Chocolate Decadence and Yam and Pumpkin Enzyme Peel. "I get better results from food-based products than I did from the chemical lines I used before."
Korbutiak says many of her clients are concerned about the health dangers of chemicals, preservatives and hormones, and are looking for natural alternatives.
"Foods are antioxidant.
Different foods have different properties, but they're active ingredients that are really beneficial," she says. "It's surprising to me that more spas aren't using them."
Food-based spa treatments can be found at a few spots around Calgary, too. Stillwater Spa, for example, has a Christmas-themed manicure that has clients resting their hands in cranberry- and cinnamon stick-infused tea ($70). Sante Spa offers a milk and honey body wrap, meant to soothe and hydrate the skin ($150).
Like most spa treatments, the ones based on foods offer an appealing level of decadent relaxation, a fun, seemingly healthy way to grab a bit of time in this hectic world.
So it seems almost churlish to ask: Do these treatments work? Is there any scientific reason to believe that chocolate really helps smooth problem areas or that the polyphenols and flavenoids in a red wine massage really fight aging?
Alas, no, says Gerald Buchanan, who teaches a course called Chemistry of Food, Drugs and Health at Carleton University.
"I'd say the cocoa butter in the chocolate might give you a smoother skin for a while," says Buchanan of the chocolate body wrap, "but that's about it. Your chances of getting slimmer as a result of this are slim, indeed."
"These are claims that are pulled out of the air. They sound good, but there's no scientific documentation for it," says Joe Schwarcz, a chemistry prof at McGill who runs the university's Office for Science and Society, which is dedicated to demystifying science for the public.
Schwarcz says peer-reviewed scientific studies to measure collagen levels in skin, skin elasticity, fat deposits and blood chemistry need to be done and then published in scientific journals before spas can make the claims that many do. So far, he says, no one has done that.
If they did, the claims might not stand up.
For example, while dark chocolate in small quantities contains antioxidants known to be good for us, Schwarcz says those benefits have to come through the stomach, not skin.
"There's no magical ingredient that can get rid of (body fat) save for liposuction. The only thing you can do when you rub something on it is affect the surface of the skin. Moisturizing creams will do that. They leave behind a layer of essentially fatty material that prevents water inside the skin from evaporating. Whether you're using Crisco or Vaseline or La Prairie's $500 cream, you're getting the same effect."
Chocolate is one of the most popular foods used at spas, along with fruits and their extracts, grapes and its byproducts, and scrubs made with salt, sugar, seeds or spices.
Schwarcz says many fruits contain the chemical alpha hydroxy acid (AHA). But they don't contain it in nearly enough concentration to increase the rate of skin cell turnover needed to reduce wrinkles, he says. For that, "you need at least eight or 10 per cent (concentration), and even most creams don't have that."
At best, says Buchanan, a fruit facial might have some benefit for a few hours. "Fruit extracts are often used as exfoliants in creams for facial refreshing," he notes. "So I'd say (the client) should get a nice glow."
Scrubs are usually harmless, but the pinker skin that emerges is probably just showing irritation, says Schwarcz. "Your body is always making new cells and sloughing old cells. . . . Every time you take a shower, you remove the surface layer."
A popular new treatment is "vinotherapy," which uses grape seeds, grape-seed oil and wine to exfoliate skin, improve circulation and "lift your mood," as the Art of Spa & Skincare says of its Cabernet Seed Scrub.
Buchanan suggests it's more likely "vinomassage" will make you sleepy, a result of muscles relaxing from all the rubbing.
"I really don't think these lubricants penetrate the outer layers of the skin, and usually one takes a shower after the massage. So the wine byproducts would have no internal effect."
In fact, says Schwarcz, you'd probably get more anti-aging benefits if you drank the wine instead.
While people tend to think treatments based on food are safer than those using "synthetic" chemicals, Schwarcz says chemicals are chemicals, no matter the source. "If you're looking at an AHA, like lactic acid, what is the difference if you're making that in the lab or if you extract it from sour milk? What defines a substance is its molecular structure, not its ancestry. One of the biggest myths out there is that somehow natural substances are better than synthetic. Nature isn't benign."
While the risk of an allergic reaction to a food treatment is small, it can happen, Schwarcz says, particularly with oils derived from nuts. And while it likely would not be used in a spa, oil made from hot peppers can burn the skin.
Still, for most of us, there's no harm in getting slathered in chocolate or having a facial made with ginger tea, "except that it might trigger vigorous unwanted licking," Schwarcz says with a chuckle.
He offers this advice the next time you're perusing the menu at your favourite spa: "Have fun. Enjoy it. Look on it as a bit of entertainment or a cultural experience, but don't expect a physiological improvement."
And think about this, too, as you ponder a day of decadent pampering and find yourself wondering if it will lift your bottom or erase your crow's feet: if it doesn't, will you really care?
Source: National Post [Aloe-Spa News]