Ingredient spotlight - cocoa and shea butter
At Salt and Lye, delivering a high-quality product to our customers is our number one priority. With this in mind, we ensure we only source the absolute best ingredients. With so much available in the cosmetics industry, it is very easy to get lost on fads and trends that spout buzz words but in the end do not deliver any therapeutic benefits to your skin.
Below we're giving you some background on two of our favourite ingredients: cocoa butter and shea butter.
What is cocoa butter?
Cocoa butter is one of our favourite ingredients to use, and is present in many of our products. Cocoa butter (also commonly known as cacao butter) in it's unrefined form is a pale yellow, hard butter, which begins to melt on skin contact. It's very moisturising, full of nourishing fatty acids and is well known for therapeutic properties such as leaving skin smooth and silky, and reducing blemishes and scars on the body.
To harness cocoa butter, the beans are taken out of the cacao plant. These natural beans are then roasted, stripped, and hard-pressed to separate out the fat - this results in the cocoa butter for use as an ingredient in cosmetics.
Cocoa butter has a high amount of fatty acids, which is what has lead to its well-deserved reputation for its ability to hydrate and nourish the skin and improve elasticity. The fat in cocoa butter forms a protective barrier over skin to hold in moisture, causing an end result that hydrates your skin and leaves it soft.
Cocoa butter is also incredibly rich in natural compounds called phytochemicals. These substances are known to improve blood flow to the skin and slow aging by protecting against damage from the sun’s harmful UV rays. This is particularly useful in Australia, where we have some of the highest skin-cancer rates in the world.
What is shea butter?
Shea butter, commonly known as Karite, is a fat extracted from the nut of the shea tree found in the tropics of Africa. It has a thick, nutty scent and a colour that varies from pale white to a creamy, light yellow tone.
Shea butter is considered to be very rich in essential nutrients, vitamins, and fatty acids that benefit the skin. The significant levels it contains of vitamins A, E, and F boosts your skin and encourages regeneration. These vitamins together helps hold off the physical appearance of marks and lines on the skin. Vitamin A alone encourages a healthy-looking appearance and vitamin F relieves the irritating symptoms of dry skin. These characteristics makes organic unrefined shea butter a fantastic addition to your skincare regimen, and is the reason why we use it commonly in our products.
What do we use it in?
We love adding butters to as many products as possible. These additives help boost our products from merely smelling amazing, but to having those little somethings 'extra' that smooth out your skin, and leave you feeling soft all day.
One of the key distinguishing features of our bath salts and bath bombs is that we add shea butter and cocoa butter to nearly every formulation. This means that you get the tension-relieving benefits of magnesium sulfate and natural rock salts, but also the hydrating properties of butters and oils. This ensure that you do not leave the bath feeling dry or dehydrated, which with other products can leave you worse off for the relaxing experience!
Feel free to ask us any questions on our products of ingredients below, or just generally tell us what you think!