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Earthly Delight shampoo - real soap or mild surfactant?
  • Byjo
    After reading rave reviews on a German hair board (http://www.langhaarnetzwerk.de, there are several topics on the subject),some questions spring to mind: Are ED shampoos really made of saponified wheat germ oil? Is there a way to test it at home? Which tensides are derived from wheat germ oil, if any? Is wg oil soap better than, say, regular coconut or olive oil soaps?

    Here's why I ask: Aubrey Organics stated the same thing on the American bottles (Coconut Oil-Corn Oil Soap), but under European law the INCI list is compulsory, so the same product sold in UK or Germany would list decyl glucoside or other mild surfactants instead of the so-called "soap." This law doesn't apply to Earthly Delight because the products aren't available in Europe, they are bought from the US over the internet.

    ED Herbal Shampoo:     Distilled water, sage, rosemary, nettles, wheatgerm soap, horsetails, essential oils of ylang ylang, neroli & sweet orange.
    ED Tropical Rain Shampoo: Distilled water, sage, rosemary, nettles, wheatgerm soap, horsetails, essential oils of neroli, cinnamon & coconut. (Does coconut essential oil even exist???)


    Many members of this board agree on one thing: the shampoo doesn't perform like real soap in (local pretty hard) water. Plus, it seems that both shampoos have the same smell (might be the new batch from Lafes, the company who has recently bought the brand from a small NY business).

    Thank you!
  • Byjo
    Could it be Disodium Wheatgermamphodiacetate?

    Another strange thing is the lack of preservatives.

    Still wondering... Help, pretty please    ? :)
  • Right BrainRight Brain
    @Byjo: I did take a quick look at this but I didn't have much luck. I found very little info online for ED. To answer your questions as best I can: 



    Q: Are ED shampoos really made of saponified wheat germ oil? 
    A: We can't find a definitive ingredient list so it's impossible to say. (If, as you say, they're not listing all their ingredients.)

    Q: Is there a way to test it at home?
    A: No, there's no way we know to test the composition of a product like this at home.

    Q: Is wg oil soap better than, say, regular coconut or olive oil soaps?
    A: We're not not soap chemists so we can't say for sure but we do know that the fatty acid profile for WG is different than coconut or olive. As far as we can tell, it's closest to cotton seed oil. We'd predict that the lathering, hardness of the soap, etc would be much different than coconut or olive.

    Q: Does coconut essential oil even exist?
    A: They're not being very precise with their language. There are coconut notes that are incorporated into fragrances but that doesn't mean they are essential oils like those extracted from flowers.

    Q: Could it be Disodium Wheatgermamphodiacetate?
    A: Yes, any oil can be chemically altered to be made into a surfactant. Again, without full disclosure of their ingredients it's impossible for us to tell if this ingredient is in this product or not.

    Q: Another strange thing is the lack of preservatives.
    A: If this product is a true soap it wouldn't require preservatives because the water activity would be very low. But I'm guessing there are preservatives but we just can't tell what they are because, once again, we don't have a complete ingredient list.  
     
     
  • alchemist
    You might be able to see if it is based on saponified wheat germ oil.  If it is a soap based product, the pH to be high.  You could test this with pool or aquarium test strips (or even try making your own red cabbage indicator).  I the pH is high it will be a soap, below about 8 it will be a surfactant based product.

    Soap products will also have a different feel but this could be hard to pick if the product is full of other bits and pieces
  • Byjo
    Many thanks to both of you!

    Alchemist, I was considering the pH thing but this isn't always relevant. Bringing again Aubrey Organics as example: their shampoos pH range from 5 to 10.9 (source: www.aubrey-organics.de) and none of them is soap based. Anyway, the conditioner's label says "Eartly Delight products are pH balanced".

    No feel or smell of potassium hydroxide soap here. Earthly Delight is definitely milder than AO products and performs wonderfully in hard water (light hair, zero buildup). I have used real soap on hair in the same place, same water with terrible results each and every time.

    It would be nice, but at at moment I don't expect Lafes chiming in with INCI ingredients. :)




  • Right BrainRight Brain
    @Alchemist: good idea on checking the pH but that won't give a definitive answer, as Byjo pointed out. For exame, We've made surfactant based shampoos with hi pH to help dissolve hair spray resin.
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