Shampoo bar trick: Skip the coconut oil

Recently did some research on cold process shampoo bars. The ones we've purchased in the past always stripped my hair of oils to an extent I could no longer get a comb through my hair. I learned that one needs to use palm kernel oil rather than coconut oil. Then use liquid oils with it, like castor, olive, etc. To avoid getting a bar that is soft, use sugar / salt in the recipe, as you will get a harder bar of shampoo that is  still relatively moisturizing.

It might be helpful to start making your own shampoo bars rather than buying them as you will know what ingredients are in the bars you make.

I am not sure why you feel that palm kernel oil is better than coconut oil.

Here is some information regarding palm kernel oil for folks that might be interested:

https://permies.com/t/102200/Staying-palm-oil

Hi Anne,
I already have made the shampoo bars. They turned out great - highly superior to shampoo bars made with coconut oil . The hype around coconut oil has made it into some sort of superstar oil, when in truth it is actually quite drying and strips hair of too many oils.
Regarding palm oil, thank you for the article.  I don't like the idea of mass-farming any crop to the point of losing large swaths of forest land. It is not like the old days when everyone had a small farm to produce just what they needed at their home.  Hopefully one day we do away with commercial farming and everyone can grow their own ingredients.  These days I see more and more small farms going away, and only the commercial farms survive.
I need a saturated fat to make shampoo and soap, and so I  can easily change to another saturated fat, that does not cause deforestation. Probably lard. I won't use coconut oil.  I've been down that road and can finally get a comb through my hair again since I made my own shampoo bars without coconut oil.

This is why I use tallow for most of my soaps. I only use coconut oil in my household soaps.

Hi Carla,
Where do you source tallow? Are these from your own beefers, meat market, grocery store or mail order?

We harvest it from the meats we cook for ourselves - that might be store-bought, butcher-bought, part of half a cow we've bought locally, etc. When you buy a whole, untrimmed brisket, there's a LOT of fat on that. My husband trims the fat and saves it for me, in the freezer. When I get enough (often, with a brisket, one is plenty!), I grind it, and render it into tallow, myself. I use it for soap, body butters, salves, ointments... So, I'm using a byproduct that would normally go to waste, making it essentially free. And, tallow matches our own human sebum better than any flora-based fats.