Cowshed soap

Calling all dirty cow owners...

Could anyone with this soap check the ingredient list for me for sodium lauryl sulphate or sodium laureth sulphate before I order some please[:I] Thank-you[y]

45.

[preiffer]

Ummm... What on earth are those ingredients?

[mitchja]

They are the soapless detergents. They act as a sufactant or surface active agent which basically means it produces the lather when the soap is mixed with water. As your skin produces oil pure soap would not get you clean as it wouldn't mix or produce a lather.

Take an oil and try and mix it with water - it wont mix and produces 2 layers. Add the sufactant (ie bar of soap) and hey presto the oil and waters mixes.

There's actually no soap in anything we use to clean these days, it's all soapless detergents as these can cope with any type of water and also perform well at low temperatures.

Regards

[mcmbenjamin]

Originally posted by mitchja
They are the soapless detergents. They act as a sufactant or surface active agent which basically means it produces the lather when the soap is mixed with water. As your skin produces oil pure soap would not get you clean as it wouldn't mix or produce a lather.

Take an oil and try and mix it with water - it wont mix and produces 2 layers. Add the sufactant (ie bar of soap) and hey presto the oil and waters mixes.

There's actually no soap in anything we use to clean these days, it's all soapless detergents as these can cope with any type of water and also perform well at low temperatures.

Someone paid attention in school!

[fozzyo]

For anyone interested in the ingredients of skincare products I would suggest having a look at the Cosmetic Database. Its an American Site but very useful! Interestingly they rate sodium lauryl sulphate and sodium laureth sulphate as being quite safe - they both received a lot of bad publicity from some floored tests done using them a few years back.

45, without looking at the ingredients list I would say with about 90% certainty that the Cowshed products do contain SLS in one form or another, it is very rare nowdays to get products that don't. And those few do make a bit of a thing about it.

Mat

Originally posted by mcmbenjamin

Originally posted by mitchja


There's actually no soap in anything we use to clean these days, it's all soapless detergents as these can cope with any type of water and also perform well at low temperatures.

Someone paid attention in school!

The only difference between a soap and a detergent is that the long carbon chain present in soap is derived from naturally occurring fats and oils and in a detergent it's derived synthetically. They have the same chemical properties when it comes to cleaning and grease/oil removal.

There's traditional soap present in most big name laundry detergents - it provides a large chunk of the 'cleaning power' in the blend. There are a wide range of pure soaps available more than capable of low temperature performance.

Thanks everyone[^] Seeing as I couldn't find an ingredient list on the web either and can't be sure of the soap's content, I'll just wait to check it out the next time I fly with VS:)

45.

[ChuckC]

Being the cynic my suspicion is lots of companies don't post ingredient lists, fearing either industrial espionage or environmentalists.

Chuck-

[mitchja]

Originally posted by ChuckC
Being the cynic my suspicion is lots of companies don't post ingredient lists, fearing either industrial espionage
Chuck-

Most companies can pretty much identify what is in a competitors product and how much of it's in there these days using standard analytical techniques. There are things we dont identify on our labels (however we dont supply the consumer industry though, certain chemicals do have to be identified on the labels by law) but we know perfectly well that competitors have the ability to see for themselves what's in there as we can do the same as well.

It's also not quite as easy as CSI make it out to be, where they put a substance into a machine and 30 seconds later you get the answer as to what it is, it can take weeks and involves a lot of work using different techniques but it can be done!! (The techniques CSI use are genuine but the time scale is reduced somewhat)

Regards

[fozzyo]

If memory serves me correctly from my research, every cosmetic product (under UK law) should be labelled with the full ingredients list, with their full name chemical rather then common name. Which is why you can't just list Tea Tree Essential Oil for example.

This is also the reason why in UC when you help yourself to a Cowshed product from the bowl you get a little leaflet with the ingredients on.

Checked in UC yesterday and I can confirm that Dirty Cow contains neither of these products:)

45.