Cleansing properties of Coconut vs Palm Kernel vs Babassu

A couple of recent posts really got me thinking about about soapcalc cleansing and conditioning numbers. I tend to keep the cleansing number between 13 and 17 for most of my recipes. As a result my conditioning number always ends up in the low 50s. That seems to make my skin happy while still satisfying my inner lather freak.

Anyhoo, what I can't seem to wrap my brain around is how differently people's skin reacts to coconut vs PKO vs babassu. All three increase cleansing and bubbles while reducing the conditioning properties. All three seem to have a similar fatty acid profile as well.

This is what's really blowing my mind. Another soaper friend recently shared some bars that contain a high % of babassu oil, like 50%! My first thought was "holy crap that's some really expensive soap" and second was "this stuff is gonna dry me out big time". Normally soap with more than 15-20% coconut oil makes me dry and itchy after one shower. I've been using my friend's soap for the past 3 days and so far it hasn't been an issue.

So here's my million $ question and hopefully some of you big, brained chemistry geeks can help me figure out the answer. Why am I so sensitive to soap with more than 20% CO but can use a 50% babassu soap no problem? I know babassu is considered a 'luxury' oil but still. I've used 10% fractionated CO and never had issues with it . . . same with PKO at 20-25%. I'm not convinced it's a coconut sensitivity because I can use soap with coconut milk no problem . . . same for ingesting coconut. What do you guys think?

What was the cure time for the babassu bar compared to your coconut bars? Not sure if that would make a big difference or not. I've found PKO to be slightly less harsh then coconut but by such a small margin it hardly worth mentioning. Just to confuse things even more, I can't use babassu, I was given a 100% babassu salt bar, 25% SF and it made me dry and itchy all over, just horrible stuff for me.

Now my head is really spinning. For now, all I know is Iam going to limit CO in my soaps, and may never use babassu oil, not in a soap anyway. But I will be watching this thread. Hope more people will chime in.

Most people have no issues with babassu in soap, I find it odd that I do but I'm one who can't use castile either. It dries me out almost as bad as a high coconut soap. I have dry skin and use coconut at 20% with a 8% SF.

I was just using straight 20% CO (anything higher bothers me - though some in my family like 25%). Recently, I've been playing around with CO and PKO. So far, my ideal bar is 12% CO, 8% PKO. It has more abundant, faster, longer-lasting lather than straight CO.

I'm watching this thread too!

It might be the difference in the amounts of the very short, saturated fatty acids that SoapCalc doesn't consider -- the caprylic and capric acids. The shortest fatty acids that Soapcalc considers are lauric acid (12 carbon atoms long) and myristic (14 carbon atoms long). Some fats used for soaping contain fatty acids are shorter yet. These include the butyric (4 carbon) and caproic (6 carbon) acids found in butterfat and the caprylic (8 carbon) and capric (10 carbon) acids found in coconut, palm kernel, and babassu.

These short fatty acids -- from butyric to lauric-- when turned into soap are able to bind to and remove protective proteins and fats in the non-living surface layer of the skin. This can cause increasing dryness, irritation, and even dermatitis. Sensitive, dry, or injured skin will show the effects most easily, but even normal skin can become irritated, especially after repeated use.

According to my notes, palm kernel and babassu have about half of the caprylic acid than coconut. Palm has about half of the capric acid than babassu and coconut. The tendency is for the shorter fatty acids in this bunch to be more irritating to the skin than the longer ones, which is why palm kernel may be the least irritating of the three fats, especially for those with sensitive skin.

While any soap can be drying to the skin, soaps made from myristic acid (14 carbon atoms long) and the longer fatty acids do not act on the skin in this way, so their potential for irritating the skin is lower.

I like Deanna's explanation, because mine would just be "magic". If I have to use high coconut for some reason, I'll split it with babassu. For my "sensitive" skin bar, I use ONLY PKO. Those who are sensitive to coconut prefer the bars that I do this to. Don't know why these two don't seem quite as drying, unless it just the coconut itself.

Well, it's not the babassu. That's simply an oil for soapers who don't feel like they're paying enough for their coconut oil. Significantly, it generally has more capric and caprylic acids than any other lauric oil. Those make drying and weird-smelling soap, so don't soap with FCO. Along with any number of soapy beliefs, babassu is a "luxury oil" because hypnosis. :shock:

We still have a lot to learn, and it will probably proceed more easily if we "snap out of it" and and stop looking at Soapcalc qualities when formulating recipes. They are simplistic and based on some bad assumptions, to the effect that in many cases it teaches people how to make mediocre soap.

But back to your question. I've seen exactly what you describe. What you're sensitive to in the 20% soap isn't the coconut oil on its own. It's the fatty acid balance of the bar as a whole. With a better-balanced recipe you can use significantly more lauric oils than that and have a less drying soap. Ask Soapcalc which of those soaps is milder and it will shamelessly lie to you.

If by any chance you know a recipe for a soap with moderate CO like 20% that you find drying, it might be interesting to look at and see what might be the matter.

@topofmurrayhill since you've mentioned soapcalc being wrong in numerous posts and basically said we are making junky soap because if it, do you care to share just what you consider a "balanced" soap? I've made soap with all kinds of weird combos of oils in different ratios, often ignoring soapcalc numbers and whether or not a soap is drying/harsh always come down to how much coconut oil I've used.

I simply do not believe that someone like me who has dry skin can use a higher % of CO, regardless of your "magic" balance of fats.

Obsidian said:

@topofmurrayhill since you've mentioned soapcalc being wrong in numerous posts and basically said we are making junky soap because if it, do you care to share just what you consider a "balanced" soap? I've made soap with all kinds of weird combos of oils in different ratios, often ignoring soapcalc numbers and whether or not a soap is drying/harsh always come down to how much coconut oil I've used.

I simply do not believe that someone like me who has dry skin can use a higher % of CO, regardless of your "magic" balance of fats.

Click to expand...

You might be able to tolerate higher CO with a higher super fat, but I won't claim you'll completely enjoy it. I tend to limit CO to 15% absolute maximum myself as I find it drying in higher percentages. 10% in many recipes as my other oils are cleansing enough to pull it off.

I think most of us use SoapCalc as a guide, but realize the numbers aren't perfect. It claims my high olive soaps are soft, non-cleansing, and feature no lather. They're actually hard as rocks, reasonably cleansing, and feature low-tolerable levels of lather.

well you guys are making this newbie feel better. I will continue on and learn and experiment, as long as the pocket book allows.:grin:

I mainly use soap calc for the lye calculation. I come up with a combination of oils and the weight for each oil. I plug those in to the app for my iPad. I don't even use the website. I pay attention to the cleansing and the creamy numbers. I like creamy lather but not too much drying. I do associate the cleanse numbers with drying since my 100% CO laundry soap would peel my skin but not the super lye Castile even at its infancy, 3 weeks. Adding superfat does change the balance of which fatty acid salt is at which proportion and which straight fatty acids are present so there might be a change in the actual cleansing numbers, that is somewhat ill represented in soap calc. Because it doesn't tell us which FAs react more readily with lye and which ones lag behind. When analyzing a CP recipe it doesn't even consider the SF level, it just shows the numbers for the actual recipe, the only change is in the amount of lye. May be no one worked out all the properties of FAs and the dynamics when a number of them are thrown together along with lye. Soap calc also doesn't take into account other shorter chain fatty acids as DeeAnna mentioned and any un saponifiables in each oil. Doesn't consider additives. The limitations are several. And I think most of us do know about this and go about doing our own thing. 100% lard soaps, Castile soaps and those salt bars, no CO soaps and so many hundreds of recipes.

Obsidian - I'll ask my friend how long the 50% babassu bars were cured. Maybe that's a clue but I suspect not . . . unfortunately I seem to react to the > 20% CO soap no matter how long they are cured. It's crazy how you reacted to babassu and olive much like I do coconut!

DeeAnna - Really appreciate all the good info about the length of the fatty acid chains! I think you could be onto something with the ratio of caprylic and capric acids. But I did some searching and found info about FCO and even goat milk containing high levels of these 2 fatty acids. So now I'm just as confused as ever! Goat milk soap has never caused issues for me either

topofmurrayhill - I'm dying to know your definition of a 'balanced' soap and agree there are lots of factors soapcalc doesn't account for. Below is a basic recipe that I used when first learning to make soap. My skin didn't like the 25% CO but when I dropped it down to the 15-20% range and made up the difference with more lard or olive oil it was fine. What changed the fatty acid balance so significantly?

"...Really appreciate all the good info about the length of the fatty acid chains! I think you could be onto something with the ratio of caprylic and capric acids. But I did some searching and found info about FCO and even goat milk containing high levels of these 2 fatty acids. So now I'm just as confused as ever! Goat milk soap has never caused issues for me either ..."

But are you taking into account the total amount of these "bad" fatty acids in your soap recipe? Whole milk, even if used as 100% of the "water" in the recipe, will only add a touch of butyric or caproic acid. You say you're using only 10% FCO, so I'm thinking the same is true for FCO -- but you need to do the math to see how much of the "bad" fatty acids are added to a recipe from the FCO to learn if this fits the pattern I've suggested or not.

Bottom line: The presence of "bad" fatty acids isn't necessarily bad -- it's how much that is the key to whether a soap is irritating or not, as well as your particular skin type. That is why some people with sensitive skin can only use, say, 10% coconut oil in their recipes, while others can use far more without a whimper.

But I might be totally off-base with all this talk about short-chain fatty acids; it may not relate at all to your troubles. So take my words with a grain of salt and remember how much you paid for them.

Great info DeeAnna thank you. It explains why I have read before that PKO is in a way milder than CO.

Lately I have also started reading soap ingredients when I see a soap bar in a shop, and I have seen that an amount of 3 at 5 soaps are made with PKO instead of CO. Maybe it is cheaper for the soap companies to buy but maybe also statistically less irritating.

As far as it concerns my experience with the "high" usage of CO (I have started soaping since January with a basic recipe I had read OO 40%, PO 30%, CO 30%), many of you here have already advised me that I should lower the % of CO, but I always said that I feel only a very limited feeling of drying skin, mostly on my hair. Now that the weather is starting to getting warmer this tiny feeling has disappeared. BUT I have noticed that my hair has started to be more oily. I then remembered a message from a girl here stating that CO will rip off skin's natural moisture and then it will produce more oil in order to stabilise the loss. So I realised that even if someone's skin isn't drying with 30% CO, it will probably create an oily hair.

So I understand now your advices for 20% or lower CO along with Castor 5-10%.

Nikos

ngian said:

Great info DeeAnna thank you. It explains why I have read before that PKO is in a way milder than CO.

Lately I have also started reading soap ingredients when I see a soap bar in a shop, and I have seen that an amount of 3 at 5 soaps are made with PKO instead of CO. Maybe it is cheaper for the soap companies to buy but maybe also statistically less irritating.

Click to expand...

At least for me, every source of PKO is significantly more expensive than CO. While I don't get the kind of prices a soap company would, I'd expect that trend to hold even there.

I'd bet on the less irritating reason.

As far as it concerns my experience with the "high" usage of CO (I have started soaping since January with a basic recipe I had read OO 40%, PO 30%, CO 30%), many of you here have already advised me that I should lower the % of CO, but I always said that I feel only a very limited feeling of drying skin, mostly on my hair.

Click to expand...

That would take my hide off. One other consideration is when you start gifting your soap, if you do. A lot of people would find that very drying.

My exception would be a pot-scrubber or window cleaning or deep-cleaning stain stick/laundry soap. There, fifty percent CO or greater wouldn't be unreasonable. You don't want grease left behind on the pot or window, and neither of those will produce more grease as a result of the stripping.

Obsidian said:

I simply do not believe that someone like me who has dry skin can use a higher % of CO, regardless of your "magic" balance of fats.

Click to expand...

Maybe you can't. I don't doubt that people have varying skin types and sensitivities. I said we were often discussing only that and not differences between soaps besides the CO. I'm not particularly sensitive, but I've been given 20% CO soaps that were drying, so there's probably something else going on too. If you think it's only the amount of CO, we don't have to agree on everything.

I spent a year making small batches to get at least a vague picture of how fatty acid balance affects soap qualities. I'm suggesting the biggest mistake in Soapcalc qualities is the idea that if you make unsaturated recipes leading to soap with undesirable rheological and other qualities, at least it will have a lot of something called "conditioning," the definition of which is...umm...

Wanna talk about magic, there it is. That especially has led, I think, to mediocre soap being made on the advice of some simplistic and mistaken arithmetic from a lye calculator. Mild soap is real, but these soft recipes just don't produce it, and they seem to magnify the drying effects of CO.

I didn't do perfectly controlled lab experiments and conduct panels of forearm-washing testers, but I think anything that moves away from Soapcalc's extremist views on "conditioning" properties and unsaturated = mild is moving towards more balanced recipes with improved qualities.

This verges on common sense. If Soapcalc was right, people would have discovered it ages ago, but only saturated and monounsaturated oil is traditionally used for soaping. Those traditions that use 100% liquid fat use olive oil, basically the hardest of the liquid oils, 100% saponification to make the hardest possible soap, and very long cure times. Aleppo soap is equivalent to Castille + CO ("lauric acid" refers to bay laurel), but it is also specially hardened and cured for several months to a year.

"Conditioning" recipes from Soapcalc that include CO are often superfatted and soft, might include linoleic oils, and are cured for weeks instead of months. Soapcalc may say all this is a good idea, but I suspect history and tradition are closer to getting it right.

DeeAnna said:

Bottom line: The presence of "bad" fatty acids isn't necessarily bad -- it's how much that is the key to whether a soap is irritating or not, as well as your particular skin type. That is why some people with sensitive skin can only use, say, 10% coconut oil in their recipes, while others can use far more without a whimper.

Click to expand...

You're not off base. It don't know what the minimum amount of capric and caprylic acid is that would be detectable as an odor or skin drying effect when soaped, but those effects are well known in the industry. I think it might be safe to say that those are bad fatty acids because in detectable quantities they contribute such decidedly bad qualities. However, that doesn't explain the babassu bar being milder, because it has more of those than CO or PKO.

FCO helped me a lot. Very early in learning to soap, I tried 20% FCO in a recipe. It taught me exactly what drying soap feels like. It only took one hand washing to tighten my skin right up. The soap also smelled weird.

I suppose there are amounts you could use in some cases that wouldn't be too noticeable, but there's a good argument that FCO is inappropriate for soaping.

Checked with my friend and the 50% babassu bars were made on March 2 so about 6 wks old when I started using it. Has anyone out there tried babassu at a higher percentage?

I googled but couldn't find much info about the specific amounts of capric and caprylic acids in different oils. However, I did find one and it seems to confirm what DeeAnna is saying about CO having almost twice the amount as babassu (see chart on pg 295).

https://books.google.com/books?id=3...page&q=babassu oil fatty acid profile&f=false

One major difference among these three oils is that CO has almost zero vit.E while PKO has 3.8% and babassu oil a whopping 19.1%. Don't know if that actually makes any difference in soaping. Just thought I would bring that up to see if our experts have anything to say. My source is the nutritiondata.self.com