I was asked once:
“Why on earth would you wash yourself in fat?!”
What that revealed wasn’t an opinion… but a widespread misunderstanding.
You don’t wash yourself in fat.
Fat plus lye makes soap plus glycerin. The finished product doesn’t contain fat the way you know it from the kitchen. Nor lye.
It’s a natural reaction more than four thousand years old. Not a trend.
Soap is one of two things:
Either it’s fat plus lye. Animal or vegetable fat reacted with a base. In the old days, people made lye from ash. The result is soap and glycerin.
Or it’s synthetic detergents. Made industrially to imitate the function of soap.
There is no third option.
Is plastic plant-based?
The starting point for the chemical ones is either crude oil… the same thing we make gasoline and plastic from… or plant oils like coconut and palm. But whatever the starting point, they go through a chemical process where the fat becomes a completely new chemical compound that doesn’t exist in nature.
Many manufacturers write “plant-based” or “from coconut oil” on the packaging. It’s technically correct. But it says nothing about what the substance has become.
It’s a bit like saying plastic is “plant-based” because oil once came from plants.
And beyond that they can be called all kinds of “nourishing” and “organic” and “natural.” Those aren’t protected terms when it comes to marketing.
But that means when something is sold as a “natural alternative” to real soap, it’s either real soap… or it isn’t. There’s no middle ground.
I’m a believer in choosing consciously.
We make fat plus lye.
That’s it.