I was just writing up a shea butter post for my blog.
From
Wikipedia:
Agbanga Karite's site describes the cosmetic properties of shea butter much better than I could:
Shea butter enables your skin to absorb moisture from the air, and as a result, it becomes softer and stays moisturized for longer. In addition, shea butter has natural sunscreen properties and anti-inflammatory agents. Because of its amazing properties, shea butter is an excellent ingredient for soaps, lotions and creams. Perhaps it is most effective when applied to the skin in its pure state. Regular users of pure, unrefined shea butter notice softer, smoother, healthier skin. Shea butter has also been shown to help with skin conditions and ailments such as extreme dryness, psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis, skin allergies, fungal infections, blemishes, wrinkles, stretch marks, scars, scrapes, and more (
source)
I almost always use shea butter in my CP soap recipes. When looking around for some shea, you'll find retailers selling either "refined" or "unrefined." According to the
American Shea Butter Institute, "the refining process removes not only the odor and color, but also removes the important bioactive nutrients" such as vitamins A, E, and F.
When it comes to soapmaking use of shea, I haven't been able to tell much of a difference between the two. I've soaped with both kinds. Knowing that the nutrients can be decreased by up to 75% when the butter is refined, makes me want to use unrefined exclusively. Unrefined shea tends to have a nuttier smell and be yellower in color, although shea in general can run the gamut of white to ivory to light green or yellow, although the ASBI says that if it's mustard-yellow-colored, it's probably "river butter," and not shea (
source). Refined shea is usually light ivory to white.
Very yellow shea (or river) butter can affect the color in your soap, so be wary of that, especially if you use micas or oxides to color or swirl in your soap batches.
There are a lot of shea suppliers out there. True shea comes from Africa almost exclusively, for example Togo, Mali, or Ghana, as it is a product of the karite tree, so make sure that you're not getting your shea from immoral suppliers who are exploiting villagers or a processing plant. Look for fair trade shea if you can find it.
Popular sources to get shea butter for soapmaking purposes are:
- Agbanga Karite - fair trade shea butter and African black soap from Togo
- Coastal Scents
- Essential Depot ~ unrefined shea is currently on sale there for $19.95 for 5 lbs, which is a good deal
- Jedwards (bulk, 55+ lbs only)
- Amazon ~ but since multiple people sell on Amazon, it's hard to know the true source of the product. Still, if you have Amazon Prime, i.e. free 2-day shipping, then it might be worth it to you.