What is Real Soap

Did you know that most mass-produced bars found in grocery and drug stores aren’t actually soap? If you take a close look at the packaging on these bars, you won’t see the word soap on the label. Instead, these products are labelled as a beauty bar or cleansing bar. The reason for this is that they don’t meet the FDA’s definition of soap. Real soap is made by combining oils and fats and a lye solution. Beauty and cleansing bars are instead made from detergents and hardening agents. (Don’t let the lye scare you - even though a soapmaker uses lye to make soap, none of it is left in the bar when the process is complete.)The FDA’s definition of soap: “when the bulk of the nonvolatile matter in the product consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and the product's detergent properties are due to the alkali-fatty acid compounds, and the product is labeled, sold, and represented solely as soap.”Handcrafted soapmakers carefully select the oils and fats used to create the soap to ensure the best cleansing experience possible.