Any Real NEED for Butters in Soap?

[BrewerGeorge]

Thanks, Folks. I went ahead and ordered some mango and shae. We'll see what happens.

 

[snappyllama]

I'm late to the party, but I love shea in the 5%ish range in soaps. Even at that small amount, I feel like it leaves almost a protective layer on my skin. I reserve it for winter since that's really nice to have when it's 10F outside. It's especially noticeable as a post-cook SF in HP.

Mango makes my skin feel tight in soap, but I love it in bath bombs - really hardens those balls up without causing breakouts.

TvVivian's veggie recipe has recently converted me to cocoa butter in soap. i have to avoid it like the plague in B&B though since it's very Comedogenic.

 

[JuneP]

Well, for one thing they add to your hard oil percentage. Shea, cocoa and Mango butter have similar moisturizing qualities, silky feel, and create good lather, add hardness to the bar, etc.. The cocoa is stronger smelling so it can affect your FO's scents. The mango is lighter color, better smell and it was also mentioned in one source that it helps with fine wrinkles, which appealed to this 76 year old! The cocoa has higher stearic acid and palmitic than the mango, for instance. So although they posses the same qualities, knowing the percentage of those other acids helps when deciding to include them or not in a recipe.

The mango doesn't accelerate trace as much as the other two. My regular recipe has 48 hard oils with 9% mango butter and I can do a 28 lye concentration, soap at rm temp and have time to do hanger swirls. I don't use shea butter because one of my grand sons is highly allergic to peanuts and I read a while back that the same thing that causes allergy in peanuts is also in shea butter, so I avoid that for soaps that will be going to my sons house.

Before I started making soaps, I did months of reading and research, got a nice big, hard cover book, and made up charts on the information, so when I was ready to use soap calc, I pretty much knew what ingredients I wanted to use in my recipes. I've used that book so much that the binding has now failed, so I should google info on how to properly glue that binding.

So I've been doing a bit of research on the shae vs cocoa vs mango butter question and it occurred to me: Do I even NEED butters at all in soap? I mean, I've learned that there is no point in using beer (a little sugar and a tiny bit of milk for protein are just as good) and I've learned that coconut milk is not much more than a coconut oil emulsion. So who's to say the same isn't true of the butters?

Obviously good soap can be made without them; that's not what I'm asking. More subtly, is there anything I can do with butters in soap that I can't do without them? Short of label appeal, which isn't a concern for me. For instance, cocoa butter is often said to harden a bar, but is this quality different from or better than the increased hardness from adding 1% stearic acid? Is the increased "creaminess" from adding shae noticeably different than adding a bit more olive oil?

I'm hoping you all can shed some light on this, because my instinct is that the relatively expensive butters should be saved for non-saponified uses and I should stick to oils for soap. My gut tells me that the "violence" of the lye environment is going to strip everything down to its basic elements and obviate all these good qualities I'm reading about in unsaponified butters.

What do you think?

 

[pope]

I had the same thoughts, I have no problem with spending the money on fancy oils and butters if I know it will make a difference, however I have not been able to find any information about it anywhere. Also not been able to find any information about what exactly it is in cocoa or shea butter that is supposed to make them so good for your skin, the only things I can find is not backed by any testing or scientific evidence.

I have a long history of dry skin, and showering was often a very itchy experience, but even with my first soap that was just coconut, olive and lard, it completely went away. I used to have flaky skin on my arms and legs, but after using my own soap for 2 weeks, it was all gone, no fancy oils or butters needed.

When looking at commercial made soap, they contain a lot of chemicals for unknown reasons, but I do suspect that they are there to reduce cost and production time, and they might be the reason why home made soap is better for me.

When reading this http://www.isclinical.com/whitepapers/dry-skin.pdf it seems to me as many of the problems with dry skin is biochemical and the remedy is mostly diet related so adding fancy oils to soap seems to me as a lost cause. That being said there is likely no harm in adding 5% fancy butter as superfat, but I doubt that there is any real benefit of doing that.

You could also ask: What is good soap? there is no right answer to that question, since everyone has their own opinion about what they like about their soap, some like it creamy, some like bubbles and some is going for the fragrance alone, so as long as it does not damage you and makes you clean, it must be good soap I think, the content of the soap does not really matter.

Why make a 2$ bar when you can get the same effect (or close to it) for .50$ a bar, right?

 

[CaraBou]

Why not try a blind test? Make several recipes, and let people decide for themselves. I love blind tests. We're too close to the process to be able to decide without any bias. We know what certain oils and butters are "supposed" to add to the soap. But testers who know nothing about the ingredients, can give you a real eye opening look at your soap. Make up a questionnaire that addresses your areas of concern, and get as many friends and coworkers as you can to participate.

This is my suggestion too. I did this with powdered goat milk. You can find the questionnaire in post #11 of this thread: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=41411

and the results in this one: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=44167

 

[doriettefarm]

Anyone else think a blind swap might be an interesting experiment? I'd be game to try different soaps without the prejudice of an ingredient label in the name of science. We could even make it a challenge to create different recipes with a similar fatty acid profile for comparison purposes.

 

[kchaystack]

I think it sounds like a great idea doriettefarm

 

[topofmurrayhill]

Anyone else think a blind swap might be an interesting experiment? I'd be game to try different soaps without the prejudice of an ingredient label in the name of science. We could even make it a challenge to create different recipes with a similar fatty acid profile for comparison purposes.

That would be very interesting. We should do more of that sort of thing.

For the record, I would like to say that I think there would likely be significant differences in soaps with ostensibly similar fatty acid profiles. I suspect the biggest bigger factor would be how our actual oils differ from the fatty acid profiles we assume for them.

It's bad enough with vegetable oils. Is your shea butter from East or West Africa. Which particular country? The percentage of stearic acid for instance can vary from 25 to 45 percent. With animal fats, it's probably even worse. What breed of animal? What part of the country? What are the animals fed? What part of the animal is the fat rendered from?

 

[CaraBou]

I don't need more soap, lol. And I've given up on trying to determine whether one soap is better than another. With the exception of having too much olive oil, I love them all! But you kids have fun

 

[Susie]

I did a blind test using my friends and family. Every last one of them preferred the high lard, no milks or butters versions. I did not have tallow at that time, so that was not tested.

 

[navigator9]

This is my suggestion too. I did this with powdered goat milk. You can find the questionnaire in post #11 of this thread: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=41411

and the results in this one: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=44167

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That was interesting CaraBou, I didn't see that post first time around. And that's what I love about blind tests...they're always suprising. You always learn something about your soap, and probably not what you expected.

 

[Obsidian]

Anyone else think a blind swap might be an interesting experiment? I'd be game to try different soaps without the prejudice of an ingredient label in the name of science. We could even make it a challenge to create different recipes with a similar fatty acid profile for comparison purposes.

Thats a great idea, I'd be game.

 

[Wessam]

I have never used butters in my soap fpr in my country they are pretty expensive. I only use them in lotion bars as they stay on the skin, while in soap you just wash them away in seconds. Yet the formula I use for my soap results in very soft baby like skin. I mainly use olive oil, rice pran oil, coconut oil, almond oil, castor oil, sesame oil... what else would the skin need to feel good?

 

[pope]

I did a blind test using my friends and family. Every last one of them preferred the high lard, no milks or butters versions. I did not have tallow at that time, so that was not tested.

that is also my experience, people tend to like the high lard soaps best. I have made some with avocado and almond oil, and I can't recall that anyone said that they where any better or worse, so to me that is a waste of money.

looking at the numbers, if assuming that all the fats are distributed evenly, you will have 5g of shea butter in a soap bar so when you are using your soap, so I would estimate that if you wash your hands, you will be exposed to something like 0.05g of shea butter, that will hardly make a difference one way or another

 

[skayc1]

I think the shae butter makes my soap better, I had a rough scratchy left elbow that even lotions didn't help till I started using my own soap that I used Shae butter in.