You can tell if what you have is pure Shea Butter by its aroma and color. The color of pure Shea Butter and its aroma can sometimes be unappealing to individual consumers, which prompted a refining process to strip it of the original color and odor.

There are two forms of Shea Butter: refined and unrefined Shea Butter. The refined Shea Butter loses its aroma and color of pure Shea Butter as it goes through the manufacturing process, which includes adding a chemical called hexane. This is a petroleum-based chemical, which is thought to be harmful to people, the environment and other living things. Most consumers prefer unrefined Shea Butter.

Their Distinctive Characteristics

The color of pure Shea Butter may be a slightly greenish or cream colored. It varies from these two colors but is seldom far from either one. It looks very rich and fatty but does not feel greasy after a few minutes of rubbing onto the skin.

The Shea Butter color can be an indication of how it was produced. The unrefined color of pure Shea Butter is the greenish or ivory color that comes naturally to the cream. Since it is unrefined and not processed with any harmful chemical, it retains the color of pure Shea Butter.

The earthy aroma of pure Shea Butter may smell peculiar at first, but the scent eventually grows on you. Refined Shea Butter not only removes the aroma of the cream, but also makes it blend better with other, often questionable, ingredients. This gives the Shea Butter products more of a variety and can appeal to all kinds of noses. However, the quality of refined Shea Butter suffers.

Uses For Pure Shea Butter

Pure Shea Butter is commonly used as either an ingredient for cosmetics or as a moisturizer itself. Due to the high demand for it, some cosmetics manufacturers use a small amount of it in some of their products and yet label it a Shea Butter product. In cases like these, you are not really getting your money’s worth since it is not purely Shea Butter.

You might like to read the ingredients and the percentage of what it contains before you buy the product.

Unrefined Shea Butter

Thus, when you hear the term vitellaria paradoxa you should immediately associate this name with West African Shea Butter and more precisely with countries such as Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana and such type of African Shea Butter is first processed in Europe before being sent onward to the US.

Uganda And Sudan

On the other hand, the term vitellaria nilotica refers to East African Shea Butter and you should then be sure that it comes from countries such as Uganda and Sudan and check to see whether that Shea Butter is pale in color and its consistency should be creamy.

In addition, quite unlike the West African sheabutter, the East African sheabutter -– sometimes called Uganda Shea Butter or Nilotica Shea Butter — has an aroma of nuts and this aroma is certainly very pleasant and the Shea Butter is also soft as well as has a texture that can best be described as creamy and thus lends it to being spread much more easily and it also melts quite readily.

However, a problem with obtaining East African sheabutter is that there is turmoil in countries such as Sudan and Uganda which makes for non-availability of the East African sheabutter.

Wholesale Shea Butter

When you compare the East African sheabutter with that from the Western parts of Africa you will find that though they may look similar in their color, the East African sheabutter is not like the West African sheabutter which is firm and which also has gritty texture and which can even melt with hand friction (which is not all that much different to East African sheabutter).

Also, the West African Sheabutter is most commonly called butyrospermum parkii and another feature of the West African Shea Butter is its ready availability and lower cost.

Once the present problems that are affecting the East African countries of Sudan and to a lesser extent Uganda settle down, it should be much easier for the Shea Butter companies to source your Organic Unrefined Nilotica East African Shea Butter from there and thus you will not have to pay extra for them though some suppliers do have direct contacts in these countries and thus can get a supply though it still is not enough to meet the demand for it.

Till then, you may even have to put up with using the West African Shea Butter variety.

African Shea Butter

Once you are confronted with the dizzying choices of different Shea Butter products, you will have a hard time making up your mind which product to choose.

Herbaceous And Delightful

Take for example one of the better products sold by the African Shea Butter Company that is known as Cape Chamomile and Lavender that is herbaceous and delightful as well as uplifting and this excellent baby butter will have you feeling and looking better though be aware that most Shea Butter products are very concentrated and that just one teaspoon of it will be enough to moisturize your entire body.

West Africa Shea Butter and Import Company

There are other African sheabutter distributors too that you can use for sourcing Shea Butter and one such is West Africa Shea Butter and Import CO. LLC (WASB), which is the sole manufacturing as well as processing company in the US with facilities in Burkina Faso in West Africa and WASB does not buy ingredients from secondary contractors or subcontracts production and is based in Forth Worth, Texas.

WASB aims to produce as well as provide the best quality in Shea Butter and with its close ties to its women workers in Burkina Faso every effort is made by this African sheabutter company to make the best as well as purest type of unrefined Shea Butter following techniques that have been passed down from generations and combining them with present day technologies.

Suppliers for African Shea Butter

There are plenty of suppliers for African Shea Butter and you can be sure to find many an African sheabutter company that is engaged in supplying pure as well as unrefined Shea Butter even in wholesale quantities. So, if you are looking for Alaffia Shea Butter, Shea Butter face creams and Shea Butter lotions as well as Shea Butter soaps you should check out Alaffia Fair Trade Shea Butter.

Since unrefined Shea Butter is very valuable as a natural resource for countries in West Africa you can be sure to find many African sheabutter traders that are helping their countries to empower the local as well as national economies.

The only trouble is that the trade practices are not so fair when dealing with countries in Europe as well as with the United States and those who are working hard hand crafting this excellent oil receive just a pittance and it is estimated that even in spite of working thirty hours in a week, the worker receives less than a dollar in the form of compensation.

African Shea Butter

Shea Butter Fair Trade

Today’s consumers are very demanding about how the products they buy not only affect their bodies, but the world.
When buying your wholesale Shea Butter, make sure the producers offer only Fair Trade unrefined Shea Butter. Fair Trade is an international organization helping to bring living wages to crop growers and pickers. Usually, these workers were on the lowest end of any pay scale, making only pennies a day, while the company that bought their crop made hundreds of times more.

By insisting on Fair Trade wholesale sheabutter, you not only make your company look good to concerned customers, but you are investing in making the crops of shea nuts you depend on more reliable, since the workers have more of an incentive to keep working. With living wages, there is better health and economic stability for the regions, which grow shea nut trees.

Unrefined Shea Butter

Most cosmetic companies not only buy Fair Trade wholesale sheabutter, but unrefined wholesale Shea Butter. Refined Shea Butter has gotten a bad name with questionable chemicals produced in the refining process. Unrefined Shea Butter has a much better health reputation.

When you contact a wholesale distributor, make sure they offer unrefined Fair Trade Shea Butter. If you can get it organic, too, that would be great, but there are some problems in monitoring the quality of organic goods.

Do I Need To Go To Africa?

You don’t need to go to Africa to find a legitimate and dependable wholesale distributor – but you do need to go online. There are companies in Africa that can help connect you to the best Shea Butter for your companies. Since there is such a demand for shea nut butter, there are several wholesale distributors to choose from.

Before you put your money down, be sure that neat-o web site has an actual company behind it. Contact the Trade Commission to see if your prospective bulk Shea Butter distributor is a real company.

African Shea Butter

Handmade African black soap is made out of roasted cocoa pods and also plantain skins ashes that are all mixed with some palm oil, unscented Shea Butter oil, and once prepared, provides Vitamin A and E as well as iron.

Used By Young And Elderly

Original handmade Shea Butter Soap is best used by the young and also elderly persons and it has many health benefits which are why it is used for taking care of tender skin as well. In fact, African Shea Butter black soap is best known for its antiseptic properties and can be used on virtually every type of skin even if it is rough or dry, and it has been shown to be useful in clearing skin of its spots and bumps.

African Shea Butter black soap also helps in revealing fresh, radiant and also healthy skin and if you have acne then using this kind of soap will provide relief as too for cases of oily skin and any other type of skin problem. It is also ideally suited to removing make-up and it has properties that help in fighting premature facial lines and it can best be used by women who may use Shea Butter black soap when showering, bathing and washing hair, feet and face.

Clearing Away Blemishes

Shea Butter black soap has been used for many centuries in the African countries as a means to get relief from acne and oily skin as well as for clearing away blemishes and taking care of a number of different types of skin issues.

So, if you want skin that is beautiful, then the Shea Butter black soap should be your first choice and with its use you can be sure of having silky soft as well as clear skin and other uses include ridding rashes from the skin as well as ring worms and even measles.

All in all, Shea black soap is ideally suited for those people who are conscious about their looks and if you want to feel great and look young then this little product can do wonders for you and is thus recommended for use.

Shea Butter Products

Shea butter is a natural product that is able to offer a bevy of benefits, namely for the skin. You will notice the following changes in your skin if you use Shea butter regularly: balanced oil production, decreased fine lines and wrinkles, increased suppleness and smoothness, increased circulation of blood to the face for a more youthful glow, and improved cellular turnover of dead skin for radiant complexion.

By heating Shea butter you can make Shea butter products yourself to use on your skin, and the results are so incredible that you will almost be able to notice them immediately after first use.

How to Heat Shea Butter

The first step involved when it comes to the matter of heating Shea butter is to set up a broiler, as you would melt chocolate in, and use this to melt the Shea butter. Just make sure that you keep the heat at a minimal level as to not burn the Shea butter and never leave the room because it will only take a few moments for the butter to heat up until it is finished.

But… make sure you add as little heat as possible, because heat affects your shea butter grade, since heat always promotes rancidity and oxidation.

Shea Butter Products

If you would rather just spend a bit of extra money and purchase already made Shea butter products, then there are a few different companies you are going to want to check out.

The Shea Butter Shop, for one, is a great option, and they offer a wonderful selection of pure African Shea butter products, all of which are offered at excellent prices.

A few of their offered products are:

• Afrikan Beauty’s Black Soap,
• Afrikan Beauty’s Pure Shea Butter Lotion,
• All Naturals 100% Pure Shea Butter,
• All Naturals Oil-O-Shea Body Wash, and
• All Naturals Shea Butter Hand and Body Moisturizer.

Karite Gold is another great option for Shea Butter products, and their formulas have been tested and tried and offer unequalled skin moisturizing, clinically proven anti-aging properties, stretch mark prevention and minimization, protection against inflammations, and rapid healing for burns.

If you decide to buy rather than make your Shea Butter products, then just make sure that the preserves have been kept in the Shea butter so that you can receive as plentiful of benefits as possible.

Shea Butter Recipe

Many of the elderly women in villages in Africa have nearly flawless skin with almost no signs of aging. The natural product Shea Butter has been used for centuries in parts of the African Continent because of its moisturizing and healing properties. Because of the natural healing and skin softening properties of Shea Butter, scientists have decided to take them a step further. Studies in these villages discovered what else these women were using from Shea Butter. The results were astonishing.

Chocolate, Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter

Further efforts on the refining and filtering of African Shea Butter in countries such Burkina Faso or Ghana came up with amazing results. They started new ways to better process and clean Shea Butter. They discovered these women used the bark from the shea trees for medicinal purposes and the shells of the nuts for mosquito repellant. As the nut and butter trade started to flourish, a substitute for cocoa butter was discovered.

Sheabutter products are not only skin moisturizers now, but are used in the chocolate manufacturing industry as an inexpensive and useful substitute for cocoa butter. Shea Butter helps to keep chocolate from melting. Therefore, the demand for Shea Butter products from Africa has increased dramatically. Shea Butter is very plentiful in Africa and is a wild resource in West, Central and East Africa.

The rural women in these regions of Africa, who harvest the nuts, send them to local markets that in turn, send them to the international market going to Holland, Sweden, Denmark and England. The women obtain the product Shea Butter by crushing and boiling and now scientists are learning how to separate the butter into two phases; the liquid (olein) and the solid (stearin).

Cosmetics And Confectionary

The solid is used for chocolate and the liquid part is used for cosmetics and healing products. The United States has yet to get approval from the FDA for allowing Shea Butter in chocolate.

As it is now, rich European Chocolates are often made with Shea Butter products. Evidently for the past 30 years vegetable oils have been substituted with Shea Butter oil in their chocolates. It seems that European Chocolates are known as a delicacy, so maybe the European Chocolatiers have really stumbled upon a good concept in cocoa butter substitutes.

If you are interested in getting West African or East African sheabutter products, then health stores in real life and online are going to be your best bet, because they are most likely to offer the most variety.

What Is African Shea Butter?

Raw Shea Butter is a solid type of oil that is made from the nuts of the karite (or shea) trees, which grow in the semi-arid regions of West Africa and Central Africa. It is non-toxic and incredibly beneficial, and is often used in foods and cooking as well as in shampoos and soaps and various different beauty products.

Pure Shea Butter can be found in three different types, derived from three different types of extractions. Raw or unrefined extraction uses water and the color ranges from cream to grayish yellow, which is the original color of Shea Butter. Refined Shea Butter is more highly processed, but many of its natural components are still intact. Finally, there is a highly refined or processed solvents of pure white Shea Butter which are used to increase the yield.

Agbanga Karite

This is one of the best websites you buy from, because they offer pure, unrefined Shea Butter, virgin coconut oil, and African black soap at wholesale quantities. Like many other African sheabutter companies, they actually handcraft their Shea Butter and soaps in Togo under Fair Trade and organic standards. Their direct involvement in the entire African Shea Butter-making process ensures not only products of the highest quality, but is made without harming workers or the environment.

Sheaterra Organics

At this website for African sheabutter, Sheaterra Organics’ mission is to provide healing, high quality holistic products that help patients by doing good for their soul and body. They are constantly striving to make products that are safe for human health and environment, and are constantly bettering themselves as African sheabutter company.

Emages Beauty

This is yet another great option that you have for African Shea Butter products. They are a Houston-based company that features respected educators and innovators in the beauty industry. Emages Beauty has created a wonderful and successful company that offers a variety of beauty products including professional makeup, professional and amateur skin care products, dental teeth whitening products, bath time luxury bath and body products, and more.