Soaps Were Made From Coconut and Lye

[2006] 

[Aajonus] 

60 years ago, even 50 years ago, about 90% of all soaps were made from coconut. They had a coconut base to them because they were great for cleansing: shampoos, body soaps, everything had coconut in it, laundry soaps, kitchen aids. They all had coconut in them.  

But you have to grow coconuts. You have to have people to cut them down because you can't have machines do it. So, it's a people-oriented industry. It's a lot of work. So, companies decided, "Oh we can make chemicals to do this. Not caring about what it does to your body and your skin. We can make these cleansers, these solvents from unnatural substances that are poisoned and we can make a lot more money. And that's why they shipped it away from coconut. 

There are still countries that use coconut, but they're not ours and they're not Britain, unless they're specialty health food, or health minded stores or companies that will make coconut soaps available for you.  

[Lewis] 

So, you're saying coconut itself are healthier to use if you can get them? 

[Aajonus] 

If you can get them naturally made. It's coconut cream, not coconut oil, coconut cream mixed with lye. That's how they used to make soap. Put lye in like you do with the cement, that hardens the fat, dries it out. Then when it gets wet, it acts as a soap and the lie will even help do that, but you just have to know to keep the lye down at a very minimal level, just enough to dry the coconut cream, so it will harden. 

If it gets wet, it lathers nicely. It cleans nicely.  

[Fred] 

So, the lye's not toxic.  

[Aajonus] 

The lye is toxic, except when it's bound with the fat, the oils. 

Now, they used to do it with take pig lard They used to make soaps out of any kind of fat, they would render it. Wood ash was another way that they did it. They would use the light woods, burn it so the ash would be light, and then they mix it with some kind of fat to make soaps. 

But lye was the chemical way to do it. The industrial way, put lye with it instead of Ash. But an Ash of course would be probably a little bit healthier, but in my lab, experiments with lye in oils, the lie doesn't get free. Once it's bound in the fat, it's locked in. 

I've never seen it show evidence of absorption into the body.