It’s (Shea) Butter Baby!!!

What it is??

So you might’ve asked yourself a time or two, what is Shea butter? If you haven’t then just ask yourself right now and work with me on this one (One thing you’ll learn is that I have a sarcastic sense of humor…Hope you don’t mind). Shea butter is a product of the Karite Nut Trees that grow naturally in the Africa. RED FLAG: If you come across some Shea butter that is GROWN or MADE in the US you may want to dig a little deeper. Shea is extracted from these nuts using a cold press method that does not involve any chemicals. Shea has a number of healing properties and practical everyday applications that I’ll tell you about later. Today, we will walk through this small introduction to Shea butter. There are basically two main types of Shea butter. There is unrefined Shea and refined Shea. There is also whipped Shea and Shea oil but I will deal with those another time as well.

Refined Shea

Refined Shea butter has been refined, obviously, and processed using high heat and chemicals. The American Shea Butter Institute states that while this type of Shea butter may have some moisturizing properties, it loses much of its healing and therapeutic properties in the refining process. Here are a few identifying markers for you to reference. Refined Shea butter typically is odorless, with a pure white color. In some cases, hexane—a neuropathic toxin—is used in the refining process. It is also fairly hard unless fillers are added but it is very easy to add long lasting fragrances to it when compared to unrefined Shea butter. Refined Shea butter is not completely worthless as a moisturizer but it pales in comparison to unrefined Shea butter.

Unrefined Shea

According to the American Shea Butter Institute, unrefined Shea butter is the better choice if you are trying to reap the full spectrum of benefits it offers. Unrefined or raw Shea butter is extracted without the use of toxic chemicals or synthetics as mentioned before. Here we go with those identifying markers again. So, unrefined Shea butter typically has a nutty aroma and its color ranges from cream to grayish-yellow. While its natural smell is relatively mild, some people find the smell of unrefined Shea butter off-putting and tend to shy away from it. The natural aroma goes away shortly after it is applied to your skin. While it may be a bit more of an involved process to add long lasting fragrances to unrefined Shea butter it is fairly common for Shea butter buffs to add essentials oils to their Shea stash depending what they intend to use it for.

Almost done

I hope you have learned something from this (hopefully) short introduction to Shea butter. While I do not consider myself to be an expert on Shea I’m confident in my ability to distinguish between the refined and unrefined. Again, I do not think refined Shea is necessarily bad. It just does not offer much benefit to the user like unrefined Shea does. PURE currently only sells unrefined Shea from a trusted source. Feel free to comment and share this post with others. Use the links to the right to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Sorry but we aren’t on MySpace. Thanks for your time…

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