True or False?

Can cocoa butter remove stretch marks?

The problem afflicts most pregnant women, not to mention many body builders, teenagers going through puberty and people who are overweight. Cocoa butter is a popular solution, but studies have found that it produces rather unimpressive results.

A recent study followed 175 women in their first pregnancies, some randomly assigned to apply a cocoa butter lotion each day and others assigned to use a placebo.  After many months, the researchers found no difference in the development or severity of marks, known medically as striae, over the abdomen, breasts or thighs.

In a similarly double-blinded study of 100 pregnant women in The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in 2000,  researchers found that those who were assigned to use a cream containing alpha tocopherol, a form of vitamin E, developed fewer marks than those given a placebo.

The verdict:
Surgical and radiofrequency treatments are available, too, but they carry a higher price.

NYT