All Soap is Lye Soap: What Else is in Your Soap?

Old Fashioned Lye soap is all the rage right now, but, did you know that ALL soap, is lye soap? Not only does all soap contain lye, but much of it contains lard. You might be surprised to find out what exactly is in your bar of soap.

Soap is basically foaming salt that is the result of mixing fat and or oil with an alkali, lye. Lye has many names such as caustic soda, sodium hydroxide or soda lye, potassium hydroxide or potash lye, and even Chamber lye also known as urine.

Most liquid soaps contain potassium hydroxide while most bar soaps are produced with sodium hydroxide, but none the less, lye it is. Sometimes lye is "disguised" on your soap label as sodium tallowate. Sodium tallowate is a naturally occurring result of combining sodium hydroxide (lye) with beef tallow and it is VERY common is commercially available soap. What this means is that when you use a bar of soap containing sodium tallowate, you are not only washing your face with lye but, also with beef fat.

If we look at the ingredients of "Lever 2000 Pure Rain", here is what we find:
"Ingredients: Sodium tallowate, sodium cocoyl isethionate, sodium cocoate, water, sodium isethionate, stearic acid, coconut fatty acid, fragrance, titanium dioxide, sodium chloride, disodium phosphate, tetrasodium EDTA, trisodium etidronate, BHT, FD&C blue no. 1, D&C red no. 33."

Now let's take a closer look at some of these ingredients.
Sodium tallowate we know is lye and beef fat, but what about Sodium cocoate?
Sodium cocoate is lye and coconut oil. Stearic acid is a saturated fatty acid that comes from lard and is added to make a bar of soap harder. Tetrasodium EDTA is a man made preservative that can be irritating to the eyes and mucous membranes. For the most part, when using a commercial soap, you are washing yourself with lard, lye, and irritating chemicals.