Why is Dr Bronner Baby Mild so soft

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Hi I think the secret of Dr BRONNER'S is the extra jojoba and hemp oil added at trace. Jojoba oil is a wax so it doesn't sponify as readily. That is what makes it so soft.
 
Hi I think the secret of Dr BRONNER'S is the extra jojoba and hemp oil added at trace. Jojoba oil is a wax so it doesn't sponify as readily. That is what makes it so soft.

I guarantee you that if you make your own liquid soap with IrishLass' liquid glycerin soap recipe, you will no longer think Dr. B's soap is so soft.
 
Sapo for the Dr. Bronner activism and donating money , just remember, when you donate you get to minus it on your taxes. :)
 
Sapo for the Dr. Bronner activism and donating money , just remember, when you donate you get to minus it on your taxes. :)

You get to take some of it off your taxes IF you have enough deductions to itemize. Most Americans don't.

Also, jojoba is going to give you cloudy soap. Just warning you.
 
Hello Everyone. I'm new in this site.

As a body soap, it sucks the moisture right out of me. I would definitely switch to something different. :think:
 
You get to take some of it off your taxes IF you have enough deductions to itemize. Most Americans don't.

Also, jojoba is going to give you cloudy soap. Just warning you.
Susie most Canadians don't too, Dr. Bronner is the one who can do it, enough of income. I am happy for him that he can afford it:))
When you or I donate it is a donation from heart and from people who actually struggle with finances:)
 
Derp, I'm not American, so I have no idea what you're on about - the taxes here are handled quite differently (Europe - Slovenia).

But yeah, Dr. B's LS is without a doubt not milder than IL's recipe or anything similar. The jojoba gets saponified, the 50%ish of it that can be, at least, and the rest filtered out. How can I be so sure? Because the soap is crystal clear, no sediment or anything of the sort, which simply isn't possible with unfiltered jojoba present. Whatever mildness may be present in the soap is not from jojoba marketing tricks but rather from the superfat, IF any of it is present at all.

Heck even an unfiltered Bronners formula is likely harsher than something lower in CO (IL GLS).
 
Hello Everyone. I'm new in this site.

As a body soap, it sucks the moisture right out of me. I would definitely switch to something different. :think:

Hey, and welcome! It would be awesome if you would introduce yourself in the introduction forum!

And Dr. B's sucks the moisture right out of me, also. Tight, dry skin is not my favorite way to start the day.

On another note:

Sapo posted a notice about vegan diets, "For those eating a vegan diet, supplementation of B12 is recommended. – The National Health and Medical Research Council"

The problem with vegan diets is that most of the people who eat "vegan" do not have adequate knowledge of what they must eat to get a balanced diet.

Then you add the perennially busy lifestyle of many people, and you have the issue of "I'll just grab something quick and eat better later." that we are all guilty of.

Tack onto that the problem that the group most at risk for not taking time to eat properly are women of childbearing age. Which is the very group that needs all their B vitamins, especially folic acid/folate to prevent birth defects such as neural tube defects.

I am not saying that people can't be healthy if they are vegans, far from it, I am just saying that to be a healthy vegan takes time and real effort to get all the necessary nutrients. Most people can't or don't put that sort of time into it. It is not for everyone.
 
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Don't make the mistake of assuming that vegans are the group with the most widespread lack of nutrition knowledge. While there is potential for failure with plant based diets, so it is for every dietary pattern. Hence charts like these are born - namely, close to half of the causes of death in the States are "diseases of affluence" with dietary factors (animal products and junk food, more often than not both of them in one package) being the primary risk factors. And I assure you vegans represent less than a percent on this chart :). Plant based eating with full control over all essential nutrients is a relative no brainer, one need only stick to whole foods (which, as you say, we all fail at regardless of eating patterns, due to craptastic lifestyles and stupidity. Some more than others (which is where the fairy tales of the dangers of plant based diets are born - idiots trying to feed a newborn exclusively apple juice :mrgreen:) - the media just gobbles that kind of sensationalist crap right up). No otherwise special effort required. Main sources of folate are leafy greens.

As for b12 - it is a bacterial byproduct, whether it is synthesized by bacteria in animal colons (all animals, including humans share this ability) and then the producing animals are ingested by other animals, whether obtained through fecal contamination (where most b12 resides), or whether produced by bacteria in a lab, nothing changes, it remains a bacterial byproduct, and the pill happens to be safest route of obtaining it. As a side note; both me and my old man had practically zero b12 stores (<148 pmol/L) when we got tested. Both meat eaters at the time (he persists, much to his demise (triple stroke recovery)). Much like what happened with iodine in salt, don't be too surprised if you see conventional, "non-vegan" food supplemented with b12 off the bat in the near future, considering 39% of people (nonvegans) are low on it.
 
I guarantee you that if you make your own liquid soap with IrishLass' liquid glycerin soap recipe, you will no longer think Dr. B's soap is so soft.

Is it cleansing as well as soft. Like can it be used all purpose? Like laundry, floors etc.
 
Don't make the mistake of assuming that vegans are the group with the most widespread lack of nutrition knowledge.

I am not in any way assuming or suggesting that. I am a nurse. I know better. And I know well the diseases of affluence. I was, and am, in no fashion disparaging of the vegetarian or vegan diets. The exact opposite it true. However, since you chose this forum (for whatever reason) to post that, I felt it necessary to caution our less educated about the nutritional issues that face vegans that education and planning were a necessary element. I apologize if you thought I was in any fashion saying that it is not a healthy diet. I was not.

I do, however, have to question why you thought that this is an appropriate thread, or indeed the correct forum, to post such. I would think that if you felt it necessary to expound on a vegan lifestyle, the general chat would have been a more appropriate place than hijacking someone's thread.

Is it cleansing as well as soft. Like can it be used all purpose? Like laundry, floors etc.

It is cleansing as well as soft. However, if you want to use a soap for laundry, floors, etc, it needs to be a very different recipe. And that recipe will be stripping to the skin. You can make that soap with 100% Coconut Oil. Use gloves to clean with it, though.
 
I am not in any way assuming or suggesting that. I am a nurse. I know better. And I know well the diseases of affluence. I was, and am, in no fashion disparaging of the vegetarian or vegan diets. The exact opposite it true. However, since you chose this forum (for whatever reason) to post that, I felt it necessary to caution our less educated about the nutritional issues that face vegans that education and planning were a necessary element. I apologize if you thought I was in any fashion saying that it is not a healthy diet. I was not.

I do, however, have to question why you thought that this is an appropriate thread, or indeed the correct forum, to post such. I would think that if you felt it necessary to expound on a vegan lifestyle, the general chat would have been a more appropriate place than hijacking someone's thread.

Small world, I'm a registered nurse :). And I didn't think you were bashing, your message was clear enough! I didn't start this to be honest :p, it started with me saying how activism, rather than marketing, was the reason for B's success (well at least according to, ironically, B themselves (reverse marketing psychology at work :O?), where veganism was only mentioned in a single word inside of a bracket. Upon deliberate resistance to the mention, I did reply (guilty), but even said "Not the right kind of forum...but oh well:". Hijacking was not on my mind, tried to avoid it, and fully support that the specific conversation die out.

BTW Susie, ever compared B's for laundry with 100% CO? I mean B's CO has to be quite insanely high, you really think it would underperform?
 
BTW Susie, ever compared B's for laundry with 100% CO? I mean B's CO has to be quite insanely high, you really think it would underperform?

Try it yourself and see. I was never a big fan of Dr. B's, and the prices are, indeed, insane. But I would overwhelmingly use my 100% CO, 0% Superfat over his any day just on results.

I'm glad to see more nurses on here. I think we bring a real down to earth practicality to the forum.
 
Been fiddling with the prices a bit lately and found nothing drastic about B prices to be honest. One 100g bar equates around 250ml of LS, in terms of soap content.

Average bar of soap, 100g: around 4-5€, non-organic
B's 500ml bottle: around 14-15€, organic and fair trade certified

Purely from a soap perspective, 9-11€/bottle would've mean't more accurate pricing (soap content+a bit of extra due to extra packaging and production costs). However the extra few bucks for ethical sourcing of ingredients doesn't seem that much of a big deal at all, considering just how bad "third world" farmers have it on our behalf - the consumer's behalf. Similarly, it's why I will never even remotely consider buying castor oil (western farmers have long stopped growing and producing everything castor, due to it's toxicity (both to farmers and the environment). We want the benefits, but none of the negativity, heh, pass.

Trailed off again, my bad.

But yeah, their standard recipe is definetly trying to be a "jack of all trades", it will inevitably not be as good at everything as more specialized soaps.
 
A random question, now that you are all on the subject of Dr. Bronner's.. I noticed that some of their soaps are marketed as Hemp "pure castille, etc.". When I've looked at the ingredients, it seems that Hemp is the oil that is used the least in those soaps, even less than some of the other smaller portioned ingredients.. The soap is mostly made of coconut oil.
Is there something I am missing? or is this purely marketing genius?
 
Hemp is probably used somewhere around 4-5% tops (likely less, considering the color, I think...), slightly more quantity than jojoba, if you count that as part of the oils. If you've truly seen it being marketed as some sort of hemp oil-based soap, it's purely marketing.

Quite common practice, no one really advertises by the main ingredient, heh. How many times have you seen a synthetic shampoo with 0.1% avocado oil labeled as "avocado shampoo" :D?

Heck, what is "garlic mash potatoes" if not 99.5% potato and 0.5% garlic :mrgreen:?
 
It is cleansing as well as soft. However, if you want to use a soap for laundry, floors, etc, it needs to be a very different recipe. And that recipe will be stripping to the skin. You can make that soap with 100% Coconut Oil. Use gloves to clean with it, though.

Cool thanks I am mainly after an all purpose personal care soap hands, body, hair, face, and maybe the odd delicate laundry item hand Washed.

But I find Dr Bronners works fairly well for lightly soiled silks, wools and socks, hosiery etc
 
Could this be why it's so mild?

Citric Acid
Make a gentler soap by using citric acid to lower the pH of handmade soap. Citric acid is commonly extracted from citrus fruits and used to create the fizzing in bath bombs and the tart white powdery coating on sour gummy candies. Appears as an acidic dry powder. 2 ounces net weight.
Instructions: Dissolve 1 part citric acid in 4 parts distilled water. After the formation of soap crystals in cold process soap (trace) or after cooking hot process soap, add the citric acid-water mixture at up to 1% of the weight of the fats. A small amount is very effective and too much can alter the saponification reaction
 
Citric Acid
Make a gentler soap by using citric acid to lower the pH of handmade soap. Citric acid is commonly extracted from citrus fruits and used to create the fizzing in bath bombs and the tart white powdery coating on sour gummy candies. Appears as an acidic dry powder. 2 ounces net weight.
Instructions: Dissolve 1 part citric acid in 4 parts distilled water. After the formation of soap crystals in cold process soap (trace) or after cooking hot process soap, add the citric acid-water mixture at up to 1% of the weight of the fats. A small amount is very effective and too much can alter the saponification reaction

Do you have a lot of experience with this? I am a newbie, completely, so I may not quite understand how CP works, but if you add this at trace will it not neutralize some of the NaOH?
 

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