Shea Butter Refined vs Unrefined

Shea butter is a great ingredient to add to your handcrafted soap. But I am occassionally asked what kind of shea butter should I use in my soap -- shea butter refined vs. unrefined. Shea butter comes from the tropics of Africa and is extracted from the nuts of the Shea-Karite tree.

Pure Shea Butter can be found in three types of extractions.
Raw or unrefined- extracted using water. The color ranges from like cream (similar to whipped butter) to grayish yellow. This is the original form of Shea Butter.
Refined is more processed and has many of its natural components still intact.
Highly refined - the color is pure white.
You can use any of these types of shea butter in your soap making. My personal philoposhy is that that the less processed something is, the more it retains its beneficial qualities.
I haven't used the raw shea butter primarily because it wasn't offered from the sources I purchase my ingredients from. More and more companies are offering this product though and I think it would be great to use in soap making.
As a result, I have used refined shea butter. I find that my products have more of a white color to them (or if I am coloring them, the color is more true) and I have been very happy with the results. I have used this refined shea butter in lip balms and whipped body butters as well. I think it is just iimportant to avoid using the highly refined shea butter where nasty chemicals are used to get it pure white. The chemicals can change the quality of the butter and destroy many of the beneficial properties that make shea butter so unique.
So if you are wondering which shea butter: refined vs. unrefined, I would tend to go with the least refined you can get for soap making.
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