Search for acne causing foods and you will find long lists of things to avoid. This article checks those lists against the evidence: what the NHS names as causes of acne, which foods researchers have tested, what they found, and where dates fit.
What the NHS says causes acne
The NHS acne page explains that acne can happen when hair follicles become blocked with excess oil and dead skin cells. Bacteria can then grow in the blocked follicles and cause inflammation and pus. The causes it lists are:
- changes in hormone levels, such as during puberty, periods, menopause and pregnancy
- conditions such as polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) and rosacea
- taking certain medicines
- products you use on your skin or hair that can make your skin greasy
No food appears on that list. Researchers have still looked at diet, and the sections below go through glycemic load, dairy, chocolate, and fruit and vegetables in turn.
What two reviews concluded
A 2022 systematic review by Meixiong and colleagues, published in JAAD International, screened 410 articles and included 34. The authors concluded that high glycemic index, increased glycemic load and carbohydrate intake "have a modest yet significant proacnegenic effect". Put simply, a small push towards acne. On dairy they called the literature "mixed", saying it may depend on sex, ethnicity and cultural dietary habits, and they said further randomised trials are necessary.
An earlier review by Dall'Oglio and colleagues covered 2009 to 2020. Its 53 articles were 11 interventional clinical trials and 42 observational studies. The authors listed high GI/GL food, dairy products, fat food and chocolate as acne-promoting factors, and fatty acids, fruit and vegetable intake as acne-protective. They also wrote that the role of specific components of milk, dairy products and chocolate "remains an unsolved issue".
Trials of low glycemic load diets
Two randomised trials give a sense of how this has been tested. Each compared a low glycemic load diet with a control diet.
In Smith and colleagues' 2007 trial, 43 male acne patients aged 15 to 25 took part for 12 weeks. The control diet emphasised carbohydrate-dense foods without reference to the glycemic index. Mean total lesion counts fell by 23.5 on the low-glycemic-load diet and by 12.0 on the control diet. The low-glycemic-load group also lost more weight (2.9 kg), and the authors said further studies are needed to separate the effect of weight loss from the effect of the diet itself.
Kwon and colleagues (2012) randomly assigned 32 Korean patients with mild to moderate acne to a low glycaemic load diet or a control diet for 10 weeks. The low glycaemic group showed significant clinical improvement in both non-inflammatory and inflammatory lesions, and its skin samples showed smaller sebaceous glands and less inflammation.
Pooled results are less clear. A Cochrane review of complementary therapies for acne combined 2 studies of low against high glycaemic load diets at 12 weeks, with 75 participants. It found no clear evidence of a difference in non-inflammatory lesion counts and rated the evidence low quality. Its overall wording was that there is "some low-quality evidence from single trials" that a low glycaemic load diet may reduce total skin lesions.
Milk, yogurt and cheese
A 2018 meta-analysis by Juhl and colleagues pooled 14 observational studies of 78,529 people aged 7 to 30. Compared with no intake, the odds ratio for acne was 1.25 for any dairy, 1.28 for any milk and 1.36 for yogurt. Cheese came out at 1.22, but its confidence interval ran from 1.00 to 1.50. The authors found publication bias and wrote that the results "should be interpreted with caution due to heterogeneity and bias across studies." Studies of this kind can show an association. They cannot show that milk causes acne.
Chocolate
A few trials have tested chocolate directly. In one by Caperton and colleagues (2014), a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 14 men aged 18 to 35 with a history of acne swallowed capsules of unsweetened 100 percent cocoa, hydrolysed gelatin powder, or a mix of both. Thirteen finished. Mean total lesions were significantly higher on day 4 and on day 7 than at baseline, and lesions were only assessed up to day 7.
Fruit and vegetables in adult women
A case-control study run in 12 Italian cities compared 248 women aged 25 or older with newly diagnosed acne against 270 women diagnosed with other conditions. Low weekly intake of fruits or vegetables was associated with acne (odds ratio 2.33), as was low consumption of fresh fish (2.76). The authors cautioned that some associations may reflect consequences of established acne, and said these factors should be assessed further in prospective studies.
Dates and acne
A PubMed search in October 2026 for acne together with date fruit, date palm or Phoenix dactylifera returned two records. One is a rat study of date palm pollen extract in a model of polycystic ovary syndrome. The other is the Italian study above, which matched only because its abstract mentions an acne "onset date". Neither looked at people eating dates, so that search turned up no study of whether dates make acne better or worse.
Dates are high in sugar. The USDA FoodData Central record 168191 lists 66.5 g of total sugars per 100 g of Medjool dates, and one pitted date weighs 24 g. Sugar content is not the same measure as glycemic index, though. In a 2011 study of five date varieties with 13 healthy volunteers, mean glycemic indices ranged from 46.3 to 55.1, which the authors described as low.
For portion size, the NHS 5 A Day guide says a 30g portion of dried fruit, such as dates, counts as 1 of your 5 A Day. It adds that dried fruit should be eaten at mealtimes, not as a snack between meals, to reduce the impact on teeth.
Ajwa dates come from Madinah in Saudi Arabia. They are small, roundish and near-black. Green Diamond lists Ajwa on its homepage (harga Kurma Ajwa Green diamond, Kurma Madinah in Malaysia) and on its Ajwa page (Kurma Madinah in Malaysia).
NHS self-care advice for acne
The NHS advice on looking after acne yourself is about skin care rather than food. It suggests washing your skin twice a day with a gentle cleanser, removing make-up at the end of the day, and choosing non-comedogenic skincare and make-up, meaning products that will not clog pores. Do not pick or squeeze spots, because this can cause scars, and do not scrub your skin. A pharmacist can advise on treatments you put on your skin, such as salicylic acid or benzoyl peroxide.
The page says to see a GP if treating acne yourself isn't working, if you have lots of spots or they are deep, painful or causing scars, if you have signs of a skin infection, or if acne is affecting your mental health.
If you are thinking of changing what you eat because of acne, note what the diet trials above tested. They changed the whole diet to a low glycemic load for 10 to 12 weeks. None of them cut out a single food.
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This article is general information, not medical advice. If your acne is severe, scarring or not improving, speak to a pharmacist, GP or dermatologist.
References
- NHS. Acne. nhs.uk
- Meixiong J, Ricco C, Vasavda C, Ho BK. Diet and acne: a systematic review. JAAD Int. 2022;7:95-112. PMID 35373155
- Dall'Oglio F, Nasca MR, Fiorentini F, Micali G. Diet and acne: review of the evidence from 2009 to 2020. Int J Dermatol. 2021;60(6):672-685. PMID 33462816
- Smith RN, Mann NJ, Braue A, Mäkeläinen H, Varigos GA. A low-glycemic-load diet improves symptoms in acne vulgaris patients: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;86(1):107-15. PMID 17616769
- Kwon HH, Yoon JY, Hong JS, et al. Clinical and histological effect of a low glycaemic load diet in treatment of acne vulgaris in Korean patients: a randomized, controlled trial. Acta Derm Venereol. 2012;92(3):241-6. PMID 22678562
- Cao H, Yang G, Wang Y, et al. Complementary therapies for acne vulgaris. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2015;1:CD009436. PMID 25597924
- Juhl CR, Bergholdt HKM, Miller IM, et al. Dairy intake and acne vulgaris: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 78,529 children, adolescents, and young adults. Nutrients. 2018;10(8):1049. PMID 30096883
- Caperton C, Block S, Viera M, Keri J, Berman B. Double-blind, placebo-controlled study assessing the effect of chocolate consumption in subjects with a history of acne vulgaris. J Clin Aesthet Dermatol. 2014;7(5):19-23. PMID 24847404
- Di Landro A, Cazzaniga S, Cusano F, et al. Adult female acne and associated risk factors: results of a multicenter case-control study in Italy. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2016;75(6):1134-1141.e1. PMID 27542588
- Abou-El-Naga AM, El-Halim Mansour HA, Farouk NI, et al. Date palm pollen extract improves fertility and pregnancy outcomes in letrozole-induced polycystic ovary syndrome rats. J Mol Histol. 2026;57(2):75. PMID 41680525
- Alkaabi JM, Al-Dabbagh B, Ahmad S, et al. Glycemic indices of five varieties of dates in healthy and diabetic subjects. Nutr J. 2011;10:59. PMID 21619670
- U.S. Department of Agriculture. FoodData Central, SR Legacy 168191: Dates, medjool. fdc.nal.usda.gov
- NHS. 5 A Day: what counts? nhs.uk