Cocoa butter
Theobroma Cacao Seed Butter
The fat of the cacao bean. Melts at skin temperature, which is the whole point.
Cocoa butter is the pale, solid fat pressed from cacao beans, and its defining property is that it melts at almost exactly the temperature of your skin. Solid in the stick, it turns to a smooth, cushioned layer the moment it touches your face — which is why it appears in balms and sticks and almost nothing else.
It is an emollient: it fills the gaps between surface cells, softens them and slows water loss. It is also mildly occlusive, so the comfort lasts. What it is not is an active with a clinical record, and we would rather say that plainly than borrow one.
The research on cocoa and skin is on cocoa polyphenols, mostly in the laboratory, and the one large trial on cocoa butter itself — for stretch marks in pregnancy — found no difference from placebo. In Smooth Talker it is texture and comfort, and it is very good at both.
The study
Laboratory studyOn samples of human skin kept alive in the laboratory, cocoa polyphenols improved markers of the skin's supporting structure — collagen and the water-binding molecules around it. Polyphenols, not butter; laboratory, not people.
Gasser P, Lati E, Peno-Mazzarino L, Bouzoud D, Allegaert L, Bernaert H. Cocoa polyphenols and their influence on parameters involved in ex vivo skin restructuring. International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 2008;30(5):339–345. PubMed 18822039
Research on the ingredient, not a test of any FOUNDER product. Cosmetic benefits only, and skin varies. These are cosmetics, not medicine.
