Commercial Soap - It may not be what you think!

If you are reading this, you probably already believe that handcrafted soap is superior to commercially made soap.  But why is that?  I won't go into all of the myriad reasons here, but want to focus on one common reason people say commercial soap is not good:  it is not really soap, but actually is made of detergents.  I heard/read that many times when I first started to make soap, taking it as the truth. But is it?  Today I was in a grocery store and decided to look at soap ingredients to see what was really in there. I'm sure I looked odd reading soap labels and writing down my findings.  But in the name of serious research, I'm willing to put up with a few strange glances. Surprise! There is a lot more soap in the soap aisle than I was led to believe.  However, that doesn't mean it is good soap.

I found several bars that were real soap, not detergents.  However, the oils used to make it were universally palm, coconut, palm kernel, and (beef) tallow.  Cheap, easy to obtain. But soaps made mostly of palm, coconut, and palm kernel oil are going to be harsh and drying by nature. Their main fatty acids are saturated, which make soaps that clean well - so well they strip the oils we want to keep in our skin as well as the dirt we want to wash off.  Ingredients are listed in the order of largest amount to smallest, and it is common to find those oils listed first, or "possibly" first - to give the manufacturer flexibility, they often will list ingredients as X or Y or Z.  So whatever they were able to buy most easily or cheapest, that's what goes into the soap.  Beef tallow, with it's fatty acid composition,  should make a decent soap, but if it the quantity is small enough, it won't mitigate the other, harsher, oils.  Not one soap listed olive oil or any of the other oils and butters we tend to use in handcrafted soap as a saponified oil.

Other bars were a combination of detergent and soap, or just detergent.  Some people don't want to use detergents because they believe them to be harsh, or even harmful. That is a debatable point, but it is true that detergents are synthesized from petroleum,  and I'm of the opinion that any time we can avoid using petroleum derivatives, that's a good thing.

I did a quick search on commercial soap-making methods, and generally speaking, the oils and lye are cooked until saponified, then impurities are removed by salt-water baths.  Glycerin is one of the "impurities" that get removed by this process, which contributes to the drying effects of commercial soap.  It is interesting to note that glycerin is often added back to commercial soap (just look at the ingredients), but exactly how much is difficult to determine.  It is quite possible the amount is too minute to make much of a difference.  We do know that the extracted glycerin is often sold, so it stands to reason that there must be less glycerin in the soap than there was originally.

Finally, chelating agents are usually added. These chemicals bind metal ions in the water, which otherwise would combine with some of the soap salts and form soap scum.  Citric acid and sodium chloride are often added as chelating agents, but even more popular are tetrasodium EDTA and tetrasodium etidronate. These last two are controversial; you can easily find articles they are unsafe, and just as easily find articles that say they are safe.  Questions about the use of citric acid and sodium chloride as chelating agents pop up on the Soap Making Forum every so often.  We consume both of those chemical regularly in our food, so putting them in our soap should be just fine. 

Bottom line?  It isn't correct to say that commercial soap "isn't soap, but made of detergents."  However, there are still plenty of reasons why commercial soap is inferior to handcrafted soap, at least IMHO.  It's now up to you to decide for yourself.