What You Should Know Before You Buy
Go to the personal care & hygiene aisle of any large grocery store and you will likely find a huge selection of “body washes” or “cleansing bars”. They are all designed to “wash” or “clean” your body in the bath or shower. Some are marketed as “moisturizing” or offering a “superior clean”. Others seem to promise that you will smell so good that you will have an easier time getting a date. Cringe!
The fact is, we all need to take a bath or shower. Pretty simple, right? So how does one decide which product to use? Actually, there are many factors. For some, it’s the scent. For others, it’s the lather or how their bodies feel after the bath or shower is over. Many are drawn to the fancy packaging, and still others only care about the price.
Over the past several years, more and more information has become available regarding the ingredients in products on store shelves. As people have become more prone to allergies and illnesses (some incredibly serious), they are paying closer attention to their purchasing power. And they should.
It is important that we look past the slick marketing techniques, the eye-catching packaging, and the empty promises of those items we buy at the grocery store. Because our skin is the largest organ of our bodies, it is not only vital that we pay close attention to what goes into our them, but what goes on to them.
As artisan soap makers, we get asked all the time what makes our soaps different from the competition. The short answer is this: what we make is actually soap. Not detergent. Not a cleansing bar. Not a body wash. Natural soap.
With that in mind, we decided to perform a little experiment. There is a very popular, well known “beauty bar” on the market that is marketed mostly to women. Many women prefer it because it is touted as natural, and good for sensitive skin. Let’s see how it stacks up against the soaps we make.
The first thing we noticed is that this bar has 19 ingredients. Nineteen! And most of them, we could not even pronounce. Here are just 7 of those ingredients and what you should know:
1. Lauric Acid
This ingredient is used as a foaming agent and a “de-greaser”. It is synthetic and has the potential of stripping natural oils from the skin.
2. Alumina
This ingredient is used to absorb oil (presumably in an effort to clean), but that includes the natural oils (sebum) produced by our own bodies.
3. Hexyl cinnamaldehyde
This is a synthetic fragrance made to smell like flowers.
4. Tartrazine
This is used to color the “beauty bar” (as well as many foods that may be on your pantry shelf). You may recognize it as Yellow Dye.
5. Elidronic Acid
This ingredient is used to make the soap more durable by trapping heavy metal ions that are created in the manufacturing process!
6. Propylene Glycol
This ingredient is added as a moisturizer (see Items 1 and 2 above) because it absorbs water. It should be noted that this ingredient is derived from petroleum – the same product used to make anti-freeze and brake fluid.
7. Sodium Isethionate
This ingredient is also a synthetic detergent and anti-static agent.
Folks, that is only 7 of the 19 ingredients on that label.I don’t know about you, but nothing about that list makes me want to use that bar!
We make sure our soaps have skin loving plant oils – olive oil, castor oil, and coconut oil. For moisturizing, we use Shea butter and for creamier lather, we use goat milk. We like to use natural ingredients for coloring, such as turmeric and organic coffee; natural additives like organic poppyseeds, organic coffee grounds, and pink Himalayan salt; and natural fragrances like lavender or lemongrass essential oils.
Personal care is indeed a personal choice, so make sure to read the labels and do your own research. If you have questions, we are here to help – and we have sample sizes of each soap you can try for yourself.
Natural, safe, effective skincare – the way God intended. That’s Yahwehs Naturals.
Thank you for providing natural products that work!