What if I told you that when you use a bar of soap, you are technically washing with a block of salt? Well, sort of...mostly...kind of. Did you know that on a chemical level bar soap actually IS a bar of salt. When fat and sodium hydroxide lye are combined in the process called saponification, a salt is created. The resulting soap is a combination of salts formed from the reaction of a specific fat and the lye.
Here are a few examples:
| sodium tallowate | tallow (animal fat) + lye |
| sodium cocoate | coconut oil + lye |
| sodium palmate | palm oil + lye |
| sodium palm kernelate | palm kernel oil + lye |
| sodium olivate | olive oil + lye |
When the newly formed soap is now combined with your bath water and oils on your skin it emulsifies them to better be washed from your body.