10/06/2020
Today we bring you 10 Shea facts and debunk any lies you might have heard about unrefined sheabutter!
Shea butter is technically a tree nut product. But unlike most tree nut products, it’s very low in the proteins that can trigger allergies.
In fact, there’s no medical literature documenting an allergy to topical shea butter.
Shea butter doesn’t contain chemical irritants known to dry out skin, and it doesn’t clog pores. It’s appropriate for nearly any skin type.
10 surprisingly raw truths about shea:
1.This “butter” has nothing to do with dairy. It's a fat extracted from the seeds of the Vitellaria paradoxa, or shea tree, a native of West African savannahs that looks like an oak. So, it's really kind of like peanut butter. (We find that rather nutty . . .)
2. Speaking of peanut butter, the purest form of shea butter is edible. Chocolate makers sometimes use it in place of cocoa butter. In Africa, it’s used in food preparation.
3. In fact, in Africa, every part of the shea tree gets used: The antioxident-rich fruit (that resembles small, green plums and tastes mildly sweet) gets eaten; the fruit and blossoms are used in medicine; and the shea tree’s bark (which supposedly resists termites) is used for lumber.
4. Shea butter is still extracted manually (mostly by women) in a painstaking process that involves collecting, cracking, pounding, roasting, grinding, separating and finally molding the dried nuts into a paste. This is no quick fix!
5. Perhaps because of this, despite its impressive moisurizing properties, most manufacturers don’t use shea butter in their products, instead opting for cheaper olive and palm oil.
TBC!!!!! Check our next post for the rest!!! @ East Legon, Accra-Ghana
