If you love chocolate, then you love cocoa butter--it is extracted from the fat of the cocoa bean (which is actually a seed and not a bean) and used in varying concentrations to add a smooth and creamy texture to chocolate. It is also widely touted as an effective agent in wrinkle and stretch-mark treatments, as having benefits for heart health and is also used by the cosmetics industry as an emollient, or skin-smoothing ingredient, in products such as lipsticks, soaps, tanning lotions and skin creams.
Chocolate
Cocoa butter gives chocolate that incredible "melts-in-your-mouth" quality because of its rather low and sharp (occurring quickly) melting point: 31 degrees C (87.8 degrees F), or just slightly below body temperature, according to the Materials Safety Data Sheet. When you put a good-quality piece of chocolate into your mouth, it immediately begins to turn to liquid, releasing all of the other chocolate compounds as it melts. The quality of a piece of chocolate depends on the amount of cocoa butter it contains, and some inferior chocolate brands do not contain cocoa butter at all but rather substitute other vegetable fats instead, leading to a more "mealy" chocolate texture that does not quite melt in your mouth.
Stretch Marks
According to Vitaminstuff.com, cocoa butter is widely used as a treatment for stretch marks due to rapid weight change or pregnancy. However, the effectiveness of this common cocoa butter use has been disputed in a Sept. 14, 2009, New York Times article that cited a 2008 double-blind clinical study in which 175 women in their first pregnancies were randomly assigned to use either cocoa butter or a placebo on a daily basis, beginning the applications in the first trimester and continuing until delivery. Neither the women nor the researchers knew which study subjects applied the cocoa butter and which ones applied the placebo (hence the "double-blind" designation). The study concluded that the group that used cocoa butter had the same results as the group that used the placebo.
Heart Health
Cocoa butter contains oleic, stearic and palmitic acids in about equal amounts. According to the Cleveland Clinic, oleic acid--also found in olive oil--is a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat. Stearic and palmitic acids are saturated fats, the types of fats generally considered to be responsible for increasing cholesterol levels. However, the Cleveland Clinic explains that stearic acid does not appear to raise cholesterol and that palmitic acid only makes up a third of cocoa butter's calories, so the clinic advises that moderate consumption of high-quality dark chocolate--about 1 oz. several times per week--may offer some heart protection.
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