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

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

The primary use for organic Shea Butter is for moisturizing and emollients. As Shea Butter food, it is still used in Africa as cooking oil and for tribal ceremonies. Many communities in Africa depend on the Shea Butter trade to support them and their tribes.

Cosmetic use of whipped Shea Butter has prompted the production of more raw Shea Butter. The demand for it is great enough that sometimes manufacturers of the cream mix in other ingredients and elements to offset the cost and make the Shea Butter more than what they have.

These additives or fragrances are simply there to add to the amount of Shea Butter but not all additives are useful or needed. 100% pure Unrefined Sheabutter does not need additives to work well and properly on people.

Two Kinds Of Shea Butter

There are two primary forms of Shea Butter, the refined and unrefined. Refined Shea Butter is the form of butter that has gone through chemical processing. The procedure strips away the natural Shea Butter color and aroma of the pure Shea Butter.

Most of the time, not only the aroma and color of the Shea Butter cream is taken away but also the natural healing properties are stripped off. Many people prefer the processed Shea Butter because sometimes the aroma can be strong and earthy.

Compared to unrefined Shea Butter, refined Shea Butter goes through a chemical process that exposes the product to dangerous chemical such as hexane. Hexane is a derivative from petroleum that can bring harm to our skin.

Hexane is commonly used to refine Sheabutter hence the alarm of some people as compounds of this harmful chemical can be left in the refined Shea Butter.

On the other hand, unrefined Sheabutter is always guaranteed to contain the natural properties that many people are looking for. Among these properties are being able to heal superficial wounds quickly and also soothe sunburn and other skin disorders.

Unrefined raw Shea Butter still has a lot of its medicinal and healing properties since it has not undergone processing which is supposed to strip these away.

Using unrefined Shea Butter is much more advantageous than using refined Shea Butter.