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

For long, Shea Butter has been linked with foods and in the African Continent this association has been very extensive as well as diverse, and to illustrate the point, there are even early accounts from the very early days when Cleopatra was living in Egypt when there were many caravans that bore jars and jars of the immensely cherished whipped Shea Butter for her personal use.

A Part Of African Cuisine

There is a lot that is working in favor of using Shea Butter and foods because it is used as well as consumed in many oil blends and also is part of the process for making margarine, confectionary items and of course, is otherwise used in cosmetics.

However, because Shea Butter is rich with vitamin E you can expect to live longer when you think of Shea Butter and food working well within the digestive system and the vitamin E also protects from rancidity. When you think of Shea Butter and food and consider its use in the chocolate industry you should be surprised to learn that it is used to complement cocoa butter.

Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter

In the countries of Asia and also in Europe there are manufacturers who are substituting cocoa butter with Shea Butter and this is not a recent phenomenon; rather, this form of using Shea Butter and food has been happening for thirty long years and the debate has also now begun in the United States about using Shea Butter and food especially in chocolates because American manufacturers seem to have been bitten by the European and Asian bug.

The reason given by manufacturers as to why Shea Butter and food is being used is that it cuts costs for the manufacturer and thus the consumer will also benefit by paying less for his or her chocolates. This, despite the Food and Drug Administration not permitting manufacturers to use Shea Butter as a substitute for cocoa butter.

Thus, though Shea Butter food are OK as far as the vitamins are concerned, when it comes to using it in chocolates the benefits are less than obvious and you should check whether the chocolate you are eating does have Shea Butter or not.

Shea Butter Benefits