The Truth About Soap

By Jacquelyn Ramsey

What do we really know about soap?

If you are using one of the standard commercially made bars, you may not even be using soap at all.

Walk into the beauty section of any department store today and you will find a dizzying array of soaps, for every possible purpose and in every conceivable size, shape, color, scent and style: 

Glycerine soaps, French milled soaps, triple milled soaps, handmade soaps, vegetable soaps, herbal soaps, mud soaps, milk soaps…(whew!)...body bars, beauty bars, complexion soaps, spa soaps, exfoliating soaps and cellulite soaps… the choices are seemingly endless.

But what is the difference between all the soaps on the market? 

The truth is, most of the products you see on grocery store and cosmetics shelves are not actually soap at all - but rather detergents. And the products which are, in fact, true soaps, are generally very hard, shiny, molded bars laden with plasticizers, preservatives, perfumes and dyes.

And here is a secret : About 90% of these soaps you see on the shelves were probably made by the same three soap companies, and all share roughly the same base, with merely different additives. 

What has become known as "glycerine soaps" are some of the most misrepresented products of all, usually consisting of neither glycerine nor soap. These products are a far cry from the simple sudsy substance our grandmothers made. And there's really nothing natural about most of them. 

But it doesn't have to be that way. So, how did something so basic as soap become so utterly complicated? Well, as usual, the answer begins with the bottom line.

Soap, in its simplest form, is the result of a chemical reaction known as saponification, or, where an acid and a base together form a salt. 

All anyone needs to make soap is a fat (which may be animal or botanically derived) and an alkali, most commonly referred to as “lye”, in the form of potassium or sodium hydroxide.

When mixed together in a solution of water, the lye molecules collide with the fat molecules, splitting them apart, then neutralizing into two new molecules: soap and glycerin. Glycerin is a sticky, sweet substance that actually draws moisture from the air and conveys that moisture to the skin. 

This natural byproduct is the secret behind the finest handmade soaps today, making them ultra rich and superbly mild and moisturizing. 

It wasn't until the industrial age when soapmaking corporations realised that the glycerin byproduct was more valuable than the actual soap—the old bottom line—and commercial soap, if it's soap at all, has become what it is today.

The History of Soap

A few thousand years ago, or so the story goes, women washing clothes in a tributary of the Tiber river noticed that it was easier to clean clothes directly below Mount Sapo, where rain brought a mixture of clay, ash and fats from recent animal sacrifices and washed downhill into the water.

It is for this place, Sapo, that soap and the process of soapmaking received its name: saponification. 

The truth is, no one actually knows who invented soap, or exactly when, but it is known that soap was used in some capacity dating back as early as 2800 B.C.  Later, the Romans employed soap for washing textiles, and there was even a soap factory--complete with finished bars--unearthed from the volcanic ruins of Pompeii.

But it wasn't until much later that soap was used for personal hygiene, and even then, it seemed to be a trend which fell in and out of favor from one era or region to another over the course of time. 

During the Dark Ages, bathing and personal hygiene was associated with evildoing and, ironically, it was thought that sharing public baths contributed to plague and disease. Of course, once the connection between cleanliness and health was made, bathing again became acceptable and even encouraged. 

In the 8th century, A.D., soapmaking had been revived around Italy and Spain, where olive oil was abundant and was used to make a soap of superior quality and mildness. This olive oil soap became known as “castile soap”, named for the region of Castile, Spain, in which it originated. By the 14th century, soapmaking was a common craft in France and across England, and eventually in the 1600s, soap had traveled with settlers to the New World.

Although from the mid 1700s until 1853, soap was heavily taxed as a luxury item in England and was reserved for only the wealthy, most soap in pioneer America was routinely made by hand in the household from scraps of leftover animal fat and grease, saved up over many months. The fat scraps would be boiled down into tallow, and the tallow would be mixed with a crude solution of lye, which was leached from woodash with water.

The resulting soap was generally harsh, due to crude and imprecise methods of measurement, and was used for everything from household cleaning and laundry to washing the hair and body, albeit less frequently than is common today.

Over time, however, chemical and industrial advances, combined with greater access to information and scientific knowledge made it possible to produce soap on a large scale, and by the 1850s, soap was one of the fastest-growing industries of its day. 

Economies of scale and newer methods in formulation had transformed soap from a luxury item to an everyday necessity. There were new laundry soaps in powder form, cake soaps for cleaning the home, milder bar soaps for cleansing the hair and body. The soap business enjoyed a kingly throne for 100 years, an indispensable product in every modern home.

But soap was not to last. 

During World War II, when a shortage of raw materials and resources made soap more expensive and impractical to make, an alternative was found. Detergents had been used in Germany since around 1916, made from petroleum byproducts and superior to soap in its ability to scour nearly any surface while rinsing clean, with the added benefit of being much cheaper to produce. 

This indiscriminate cleansing power came at a price; detergents clean a little too well, and tend to strip everything away from the hair and skin, including the beneficial natural oils, and leaving a feeling of dryness or chapping.

During the boom of the 1950s, though, detergents had already superceded soap and became the new standard of cleaning. Today, detergents are the indispensable product; used in everything from toothpaste to laundry liquids and powders to shampoos to car polishes to shower gels and “body bars”. 

And detergents continue to strip our skin and hair and continue to come at a price; the mounting problem of dwindling petroleum reserves, a non-renewable and highly polluting resource.

Soaps Today

Today, products litter the shelves of supermarkets and beauty departments which look a lot like soap, but aren't. 

Mostly, they are detergents and can be most easily identified by the label, which will say, “beauty bar” or “body bar”, rather than “soap”. If you're looking for a true soap, it does still exist, but usually in a distorted and chemically-altered, inferior, probably-drying bar.

Real Soap is made in the Cold process method which are usually made in small, artisinal batches by hand, with high-quality nut or fruit oils chosen for their specific properties in finished soap. 

An important soaping ingredient is coconut oil, which contributes a quick, copious and fluffy lather. Other exotic oils and fats are often added to the soap formula, in what is called "superfatting" - a method of adding an extra percentage of nourishing oils to the forming soap, which will remain in their unreacted form and thereby lend extra emollience within the finished bar.

But modern commercial soap is processed at high temperatures in a vacuum, which speeds up saponification for faster product turnover.

Ever wonder why it is that commercial soaps tend to feel drying to the skin? Well, it all comes down to magical glycerin again. Glycerin is so valuable in other cosmetic and even food applications that soap companies realized that they could make more money off the byproduct of soap than the soap itself. 

Without the glycerin, commercial soap is very drying. In order to make up for it, and to make a longer lasting product, freshly cooked soap is extruded between chilled steel rollers, then shredded and chipped, amended with plasticizers to make it shiny and hard, then mixed with perfumes and dyes to make it look and smell pretty, along with preservatives so it has an infinite shelf life, then pressed back together under tremendous pressure, compacted into moulds, packaged and sold.  This is what is known as “milled soap”.

What's important to remember is this: Detergents and soaps have not evolved to benefit us. They have evolved to improve the bottom line of the companies who make them, at every turn. The large companies increase their profits, and our skin and our planet pays for it.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Soap doesn't have to be drying. It doesn't have to be made from animals. It doesn't even have to be made with heat. 

In contrast, soap can be luxurious, gentle, vegetable-derived and natural.