So I finally finished looking up and researching the ingredients in Alaffia Shea & Honey Nourishing Shampoo, Citrus Blossom. Alas, it has saponified butyrospermum parkii (shea) butter in it. This may sound like a good thing, but what it means is that this is soap made from shea butter. In my research and personal experience, I find soap really drying. Also, it makes me nervous to see it included in a product.

You see, in order to make a soap (in a process called saponification), your react a fat with something alkali, like sodium hydroxide, and that turns the fat into soap. My grandmother used to make laundry detergent using lard and lye. She always cautioned us not to wash our hands with it because it was too harsh for skin. So if something is a soap, even something that sounds really moisturizing like shea butter, it’s been reacted with something alkali to make it so.

The thing that gets me is that if something is a true soap, they don’t have to put on the label what they used to make it a soap. They can just put what fat the soap was made from only, so when you read the label you’re like, oh! shea butter. That has to be moisturizing. Plus natural. But what they aren’t telling you is what else is in there. Now, you can use other things to turn a fat into soap to make the soap less strong (one of my books said it can be reacted with fatty acids to make it gentle), and it would be nice if the label let you know, because then the soap might not be considered as drying.

However, the label only said saponified shea butter, which means it could have been reacted with anything, including sodium hydroxide. So for this reason, I can’t recommend this shampoo.