Courtesy
A humble bar of soap is perhaps the most important tool in your grooming regimen. Although often overlooked, soaps come in a staggering array of compositions, and the packaging often boasts a list of ingredients. Understanding the best soap to buy begins with considering your skin type and analyzing the components of a soap to see what will suit your needs.
In technical terms, soap is a salt of a fatty acid. When vegetable or animal fats (triglycerides) are combined with an alkaline solution (eg lye), the triglycerides hydrolyze into soap. It sounds complex, but soap production dates back thousands of years. The earliest soap making processes combined boiled fats with ashes. Soap making became more complex as civilizations developed, and by the mid-15th century soap making was semi-industrialized in France. The post-industrial nineteenth century saw the growth of the soap industry, but the next major innovation came in 1916 when Germany developed synthetic detergents in response to the grease shortage due to WWI. . In the 1930s, Procter and Gamble developed a process that reduced soap production times to less than a day, thus reducing the weeks in the process.
The industrialization of soap created the hard bars that you will now find in any big box or motel store. The truth is, many of these conventional soaps are very harsh; they are very alkaline and contain preservatives, artificial colors and synthetic fragrances which irritate the skin. Fortunately, there is now a wide range of soaps formulated to cleanse without irritating. While the processes and ingredients differ greatly, the result is the same – a solid cleanser that you will actually enjoy using every day.
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