"What's in it Wednesday" Dove Beauty Bar

My mother and I have taken up making our own goats milk soap. She has two milk goats at her place and well, there is always a steady supply of fresh raw goats milk so why not soap it. Before now she and I were both fiercely loyal to Dove brand bath bars. It was in fact the standard we wanted our goats milk soap to achieve in order for us to continue to bother with it. She wanted me to look at a dove bar for my what's in it Wednesday this week and see how our bars compare. I used ewg cosmetic database for all my research. What I expected to find was some fats lye and additives and that is pretty much what is in the bar. Basic soap is made with oil lye and water.  You can do it at home pretty easily. Well as long as you are careful with your lye. The result is amazing and unlike commercial soaps the glycerin that naturally occurs hasn't been striped out for use in more expensive products. 


So the break out of dove bars 11 ingredients are...

Tallow - animal fat probably beef but could be other animals. 
Sodium lauroyl Isethionate - Ester based (synthetic) cleaning agent. 
Stearic Acid - Natural fat from farm animals possibly euthanize cats and dogs.Lauric Acid - fatty acid used as an emulsifier in soaps Sodium Stearate - Viscosity Increasing Agent , helps the soap keep it's shape.Cocamidopropyl Betaine - used to condition and clean the skin but is also known to be an allergen and a mild toxic to  the immune system. Sodium Cocoate - coconut oil and lye saponified.Sodium Palm Kernelate - palm kernel oil and lye saponified. Fragrance - undisclosed mixture of various scent chemicals and ingredients used as fragrance dispersants. Can be mildly toxic or irritating to the skin.Tetrasodium Etidronate - Emulsifier. Titanium Dioxide - Colorant inorganic and hazards come from inhalation mostly.



5 ingredients on the list are Fats ether fatty acid or saponified fat from the soap making process. While that is mostly ok, for example, when I make soap I use coconut oil and palm kernel in the bars I don't use tallow or livestock fat as much but I am not apposed to trying out a bacon fat bar of soap for fun. Based on the list of ingredients I would guess that the coconut and palm are being used at a much smaller percentage that the tallows or other animal fats mostly because they are cheaper. The higher the quality of the fat the higher quality of the soap bar but also the more expensive the bar is to produce. 

Sodium Lauroyl isethionate (synthetic detergent)
Sodium Stearate - hardener and strong cleaner
Cocamidopropyl Betaine - known allergen
Fragrance - (who knows what that really is)
Tetrasodium etidronate - This is actually more of a preservative as it is intended to stabilize the other ingredients. If you are selling mass quantities of soap this makes sense as your shelf life and there for time you have to move your product increases. So for me not necessary.

The ingredient I am most on the fence about it Titanium Dioxide. I have seen this for sale from my soap making supplier. It is a colorant and makes soap a deep opaque white color. I read one concern that it is a inorganic compound. Chemically this just means it lacks carbons. By this standard water is inorganic so that is not my concern. What is hazardous is inhaling this material.  I think if you were to work with it in it's liquid form you would probably be just fine. I haven't yet decided if for me it's worth it. I like pretty soaps but they don't have to be white in order to be pretty. 

So that is it. For the record we love our goats milk soap bars and while we continue to tweak with the recipe I can tell you I won't be going down the soap aisle at the store any time soon.

What to try your own soap bar at home and love the dove brand I would suggest this you-tube soap making tutorial. She has her own breakout of the Sensitive skin variety which is a little different than the ingredients I have listed above. The basic things are the same though.