Herein, a seal we would love to see more often in real she butter-made products.

Pure? Wild? Refined? Non-refined?

For the past ten years, shea butter has become the base ingredient of skin and hair, care and hygienic products.

Used for shampoos, creams, lipsticks, balms, there is unfortunately no specific rule for shea butter and yet, one can consider it similar to Olive oil wine or any other product from which their wealth and quality is derived from the soil their raw materials grow from.

Consequently, Shea supply resembles a “masquerade ball” where each trademark decides of its indication of country of origin.

Sometimes called “pure shea” while mixed with a lot of water or called “wild” to justify the unpleasant smells, “100 percent natural” but strangely snow white, from Mexico, South of France, or Mumbai!

Few are the trademarks offering and claiming to offer a pure and non refined shea butter in the European Market. Indeed, shea is a 100 percent African tree and the European market is drowned under refined shea. In addition, to be able to offer a non refined shea butter of quality (fresh, naturally purified, yellowish with a superior ratio of unsaponifiable) one must be present at the root and to do fieldwork with the female producers. That is the reason why non refined shea butter is offered by small and medium-sized organic and fair trade brands.

Today, it is almost impossible to know if the butter used in a cosmetic product is refined or not, and yet, by refining shea butter, the latter loses quite a large amount of its repairing assets, notably its ratio of unsaponifiables, or the linolenic acid (anti-inflammatory, anti-allergenic).