Soap and Detergent are not created equal…

I did not know this.

But check out this article:

Most ‘soaps’ are not soap but detergent:
Usually these products are labeled as beauty, facial, or cleansing bars, and sometimes even as soap. Detergents are made from petroleum products and consist mainly of surfactants, foaming agents and alcohols.

This is news to me. But it makes sense, if you think about it…and ticks me off, when these “detergent bars” are most likely the ones that proclaim in their marketing campaigns, “Soap can be so drying…but such and such beauty bar doesn’t contain soap and has all these awesome moisturizers…” (I haven’t researched that, by the way, it just sort of makes sense.) Soap in its “real” form involves using lye to saponify some form of fat, often beef tallow (boo) or coconut or palm oils.

Considering where the bulk of beef in the U.S. comes from, I think I’ll stick with the coconut oil stuff instead. Wouldn’t you?

(I still haven’t dared to actually make my own soap, though I’ve tried the melt-and-pour route a few times…)

And here is another article, suggesting that the “drying” factor of soap has less to do with soap itself than with the fact that a) the industrial process removes the glycerin, and b) all kinds of other things, fragrances and foaming agents and such, are added to the soap which themselves cause the drying issue.  Feels like yet another case of the industry saving us from a problem it creates for us in the first place…no wonder so many people are starting to go “soap free” and loving it.