Soap 101 – What Makes Amore?
If you’ve read the previous articles, you’ve got a good idea of what soap is, what goes into it, and how to interpret ingredient labels on regular soap. At Amore Soap, we’ll save you the trouble of interpreting our ingredient labels by listing our actual ingredients.
Pure Amore
Our first variety, Pure Amore, contains nothing extra, just pure, natural soap ingredients, listed in order of quantity:
- Canola oil. Mainly grown in Canada, canola is an inexpensive but highly nutritious seed oil. It has a very low concentration of saturated fats, giving it a long shelf life. It also contains a large concentration of omega-3 fatty acids.
- Olive oil. A traditional ingredient in Castile soap, olive oil has long been recognized for its healthy skin benefits. Some studies have shown a preventive effect against skin cancer.
- Water. I use purified water, to avoid any residual chlorine there may be in my local tap water. Most of the water evaporates during the saponification and curing stages.
- Coconut oil. Like palm oil, coconut oil is solid at room temperature, resulting in a firm bar of soap that doesn’t soften in your soap dish. I prefer coconut to palm because of issues surrounding the sustainability of the global palm oil supply.
- Lye. The common name for sodium hydroxide. This ingredient converts the oils to soap.
- Shea butter. Another solid oil. Shea butter is widely used in skin care products because of its moisturizing properties.
And that’s it. As I add more varieties, I’ll list their ingredients here. Of course, ingredients are also listed on the product label.
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