Question for those of you with nut allergies

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
As you know I am starting a little home soap business. Someone on here warned me to not use peanut oil and that makes perfect sense to me plus I wasnt going to anyway since it cost more than the cheaper oils I can use. The things I am wondering about however are it is recommended to use some higher quality oils to make the bars more luxurious. Things like sweet almond oil, macadamia oil, different nut butters like almond butter or pistachio butter. Wouldnt people allergic to peanuts also be allergic to those nuts too? Or is it just peanuts.

Also...what about coconut? Almost ALL soap has coconut in it. Your gonna have a hard time getting a hard bar that suds up without coconut in it.

Now I will be putting the ingredients on the packaging so people will know if they are buying something with a nut in it but I only have one kitchen and I can try my best to not have any contamination but I cant guarantee it. I dont actually buy peanut butter because I dont like it so chances of that getting in anything are about zip but even washing dishes I cant be 100% sure almond oil doesnt get into a stray bar.

I also plan to do vegan vs bars made with animal fats...ie lard. If I could render my own tallow I would but we have to keep any beef fat we get for making burger from deer meat. Have you seen the price of ground beef lately? Holy cow!

Im getting off track....avocado oil, almond oil, macadamia oil, etc...and I dont even know about cocoa butter and what the heck a shea is!
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
Janet, my grandson Ethan is the one with the severe peanut allergy. The allergist tested him for everything under the sun. And the ONLY thing he proved to be allergic to was peanuts, which is surprisiing to me. Supposedly he would be OK with tree nuts like walnuts or pecans but they're afraid to test that theory because his reactions to the peanuts have been so quick and so serious. Allergies are such weird things! Both of his parents have quite a few environmental allergies to things like certain trees, pollen, grass and dust mites but no food allergies at all. Ethan isn't allergic to even the common things like pollens and grass but just has the one super severe allergy to peanuts. They don't yet know why so many small kids are coming down with these life threatening peanut allergies but it's a fairly recent thing. When I was a kid the gov't would give tons of surplus peanut butter to the schools and it was in practically every school lunch we ever had!
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Tree nut and peanut allergies are two different things. One can be allergic to one without the other.

Peanuts are not actually nuts. They are legumes (beans). If you use tree nut oils in your soap, you MUST label them just as you do with peanut oil.
Tree nut allergies can be just as life-threatening as peanut allergies.

ALL vegetable oils are made from seeds. You can use grapeseed oil with less risk of allergic reactions. There are other non-nut oils you can use for super-fatting soaps.

I use a soap super-fatted with shea butter in the winter. If you use the shea butter, be sure to get the processed stuff. The 'raw' stuff has a very strong odor that many find to be unpleasant.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I am doing some veggie soap for those who cant believe we still make soap with animal fats, soap with lard for those who know we do and like the fact it works well and then most are superfatted. It just depends on if I want to use shea butter, mango butter, or one of the other nicer oils. I did one super fatting withing hemp oil.

I hot process so I can know which oil is superfatted.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Wash your tools thoroughly, hands too, label everything, and let the consumer worry about it. As long as you label things clearly, people will be fine.
 
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