Beauty

[katkitty]

Linking for background information!

Black Soap @ Wegman"s

http://community.qvc.com/forums/Beauty-Banter/topic/154684/black-soap-wegmans.aspx

Traditional African Black Soap from Ghana is the type of Black Soap intended for use on sensitive skin and hair. Traditionally made in Ghana, West Africa (this kind is also made in Nigeria, West Africa) Black Soap is also known as Anago Soap or Alata Soap in Ghana, and as Ose Dudu in Nigeria

Black Soap is made from roasted cocoa (chocolate) pods, plantain skins ashes mixed with palm oil. Black Soap is especially recommended for the very young and the elderly, or anyone with tender skin. It leaves the skin smooth and soft. (I personally wouldn't use STO ABS on a baby!)

Traditional African Black Soap is centuries old, has numerous benefits and is not scented. For centuries, Africans have used Black Soap to help relieve acne, oily skin, clear blemishes and various other skin issues. Many swear by it for skin irritations and conditions such as eczema and psoriasis as well. African Black soap has also been used to achieve quality beautiful skin. Africans have also used this natural soap for bathing and washing their hair. It's excellent for removing make-up too. Black Soap will leave your skin silky soft and clear. African people also use Black Soap to rid the skin of rashes, ring worm, measles, and body odors. It is used as a natural shampoo to avoid dry itchy scalp.

If you haven't used this soap before, it's a little bit crumbly in nature and softer than most soaps. It has a delicate texture & a natural earthy smell. It is not oily or scented. Black Soap or African Black Soap also known as Anago Soap or Alata soap, originates from West Africa. It has been used for centuries in countries like Ghana and Nigeria. It's methods and secrets have been passed down from generation to generation to keep the soap close to mother nature and avoid exploitation & imitations. This African Black Soap is not the mass produced African Black Soap in boxes all over the market.

African Black Soap comes from plantain skins originally. Plantain is a rich source of vitamins A & E and iron. (plantain is a popular food in Africa & other parts of the world. It looks much like a banana, but it's bigger and longer.) The skin of the plantain is dried to a specific texture under the hot African sun and then roasted in a clay oven. The heat must be kept precisely at a constant temperature in order to achieve a particular color, texture & smell. The roasting of the plantains determines the color of the soap. The longer the plantains are roasted, the darker the soap. Next, the roasted skins of the Plantain are mixed with Palm oil and Palm Kernel oil to form the soap. These oils are in their purest form - without refining - and they make for a highly nourishing soap. Different African tribes make their own variations of Black Soap, as do separate Countries and their recipes are highly guarded.

On to: Traditional Soapmaking:

To make soap manufacturers start with fats, and sodium hyroxide or another alkalai. Water and heat are used in the processing. According to soap-making terminology, the alkalai is used to saponify the fats. But I think it better reflects reality to say that the 2 substances, the fats, and the alkalai, interact with each other, with the result of their interaction being soap and glycerine.

You can use potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide, or a substance such as wood ashes (or relatively simple derivatives) -- containing potassium carbonate. However wood ashes are generally used only in home soapmaking, and not in commercial production.

Sodium hydroxide consists of sodium and hydroxide -- chemically united. Sodium hydroxide is the alkalai that has traditionally been used to make soap, ever since it became widely available, starting around 1791. It has been called caustic soda and lye.

A fat consists of glycerine, and 3 fatty acids -- chemically united.

Adding sodium hydroxide (or potassium hydroxide) to a fat results in the glycerine and the fatty acids of the fat separating from each other, and the sodium and the hydroxide of the sodium hydroxide separating from each other. At the same time, the hydroxide and the glycerine combine, to form complete , stable, glycerine molecules. Also, at the same time, the sodium (or the potassium) and the fatty acids combine, forming "soap." According to this chemistry, soap is a synonym for a "sodium salt" or "potassium salt" of a fatty acid. The whole process of the salting out of soap, from fats, along with the production of glycerine, by adding an alkalai to the fats, gets labeled as being saponification. Water and heat may be needed to get the chemical reaction to take place.

However, "if industrially produced fatty acids are used in place of natural fats and oils, the reaction with caustic soda yields soap and water instead of soap and glycerin."

And, in fact, modern commercial soap, in the "industrialized " nations of the world, is most often made using the "continuous process" or "hydrolyzer process" of soap-making, wherin natural fats are first separated into their component fatty acids and glycerin, the fatty acids are then separated from each other, and then sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) is added to single fatty acids, causing water to separate out, leaving soap. Each of the different soaps made from each of the different fatty acids are then blended -- to achieve soaps with desirable properties.

Where on earth do the potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide or other alkalai used to make commercial soap come from?

A water extract of pot ash, or potash, that is, wood ashes from fireplaces, collected in pots, apparently contains a large enough quantity of potassium carbonate to saponify fats, and in fact, such a water extract was used, without futher refining, by many people, historically, to make soap.

And apparently chemists got the idea for the name for the chemical potassium -- from the pot ash in which it they first discovered it.

Most modern soap is made with sodium hydroxide. Some soaps, for example liquid soaps, are often made with postassium hydroxide, as are industrially-used soaps. But most toilet soap is made with sodium hydroxide. Modern day sodium hydroxide comes from sodium chloride "It is usually a by-product in the production of chlorine from salt."

The LeBlanc process made the time-consuming processes of saving wood ashes -- unnecessary. This resulted in a revolution in soapmaking, and in soap becoming abundant.

The Leblanc process produces soda by first heating salt (sodium chloride) with sulfuric acid. The sodium in the salt and the hydrogen in the acid change places, producing hydrogen chloride, or hydrochloric acid, and sodium sulfate, or "salt cake." Additional steps yield a mixture of sodium carbonate and calcium sulfide. The two are separated by washing out the sodium carbonate with water.

Source:

http://shakahara.com/soap3.html