Vegans are shocked when they hear this about soap!

Most of us don’t stop and consider what is actually in most of the items we use everyday, and soap is no exception.

There is one group of people, however, who are more conscious of ingredients than the majority of us, and that is Vegans. They are very aware and do read food labels but very few stop to look at skincare products and their ingredients.

What I would like to point out here is that most commercial soaps contains an animal product….yes its true!

Look at the ingredients list on a soap wrapper and you will find Sodium tallowate, usually as one of the first ingredients, meaning it is one of the main ingredients. Sodium tallowate translates into salt of tallow and tallow is beef or sheep fat!

Just a quick note regarding the ‘salt’ aspect….and without getting too technical… when the fats and oils used in making a soap are mixed with a strong alkaline solution, like sodium hydroxide and water (commonly known as lye), the chemical reaction results in glycerol and salts. So basically, soap is glycerine and salt! That is very much a ‘laymans’ explanation. If you want to learn more about this, do a bit of research.

The other major ingredient in soap is Sodium Palmate, which for me opens a whole new ‘can of worms’. It isn’t an animal product but it does have a devastating impact on the environment and the animals that live in that environment.

I, myself, am not a Vegan or a Vegetarian, but I can totally relate to why people do become vegan or vegetarian. My question is, if becoming vegan or vegetarian is because of ‘animal rights’ and the pain/suffering caused to animals surely then things like the harvesting of palm oil falls into that category too? Where huge tracts of forested land, mostly in Indonesia which is home to the Orangutan, are burnt to harvest the palm oil, leaving the animals dead, homeless, orphaned or maimed! Where do we draw the line?

Watch Leonardo DiCaprio in National Geographics environmental movie “Before The Flood”

Like I said a very contentious issue!