Grocery Store Soap

Nearly all of the soaps that I call "grocery store" soaps start with 80% tallow and 20% coconut oil. (Tallow is rendered beef fat, whereas lard is rendered pork fat.) The oils are reacted with caustic soda, the glycerine is immediately removed while the soap is still hot, and the resulting soap is cooled and dried. Then they start adding the additives.

The 80/20 tallow and coconut oil ratio makes a soap that has come to be called "80/20 soap base", and virtually all of the major soap makers throughout the world use this as a base for their bar soap. So the only real differences among all the various bars of soap are different fragrances, colorants, and other additives.

The table below gives a list of the components in typical bar soap formulations. (There is a lot of stuff in your soap besides soap, as you can see.) Not every brand will have all of these, and some will have more.

Table 1. Typical Toilet Soap Formula Components

Component	Examples	% Range
Surfactant	Soap	65-85
	Synthetic Detergent	0.0 - 20.0
Antioxidant (Preservative)	BHT (Butylated Hydroxytoluene)	0.1 - 0.4
Sequesterant	EDTA, DTPA	0.1 - 0.5
Whitening Agent	Titanium Dioxide	0.1 - 0.5
Special Additives
Deoderant / Antibacterials	Triclosan, Triclocarban	0.2 - 1.5
Skin-feel Additives	Fatty Acids, Polyacryloates	0.5 - 10.0
Lather Stabilizers	Coco-Amides	1.0 - 5.0
Moisturizer	Glycerine, Lanolin	0.5 - 5.0
Bar Hardening Agents	NaCl, Na2SO4	0.5 - 1.5
Color Additives	Various Colorants	0.01 - 0.0001
Fragrance		0.5 - 2.0
Fillers	Starch	0 - 10.0
Water		8.0 - 15.0

 

Reference: Soap Technology for the 1990's; edited by Luis Spitz, published by the American Oil Chemists Society, Champaign, Illinois, copyright 1990.

Notice a couple of things about the contents of the table. Under "surfactant" (which stands for "surface active agent", a general name for soaps and detergents), there are two types: soap and synthetic detergent. Some "soap" bars these days have detergents in them such as sodium cocoyl isethionate. More about detergents later in this article.

Next, notice that there are lots of things that have nothing to do with either getting you clean or taking care of your skin. In fact, everything in the table except the soap and the moisturizer falls in this category. These are things that are dictated by the marketing department to make the bar look a certain way or feel a certain way or smell a certain way. They help sell the soap, but they don't necessarily get you any cleaner.