A Lesson: Soap defined and that "Antibacterial" craze.

So what is soap? Is it the stuff in a bottle that says "Antibacterial" on it? Is it that pressed funky shaped bar from the grocery store that comes in box, 8 to a package? How about that clear bar of stuff in fruity flavors that's supposed to be good for my face? Or better yet, its that stuff we put into laundry to get our clothes clean, right? There is a lot of confusion today about what soap really is.

Its time to do a little myth busting here. The true definition of a soap is that it is a mixture of an acid (fats and oils) that react with a base (sodium or potassium hydroxide) to form soap and glycerin. GASP! You mean you're rubbing fat all over your skin? Well, no. Once the mixture has gone through the soap making chemical reaction, known as saponification, it is no longer just fats and lye.. its a great bar of handmade soap that your skin is going to love. A truly accomplished soapmaker knows how to do the research to take a blend of oils to get their best skin attributing properties and turn them into a bubbly bar of soap full of lather. Finding a good blend of oils is both an art as well as a science, honestly.

So is that stuff at the grocery store really soap? Well, look at the label. The FDA says that only real soap made by the above process can be labelled as such. The others on the shelf are synthetic detergents. Detergents are made from chemicals and things that are hard to pronounce. They can be very drying and irritating to the skin, and leave a sticky film around the tub.

So what about that "Antibacterial" craze? Soap by its very nature is antibacterial. When you wash your hands with soap and water, the soap binds to germs and allows them to slide right off and down the drain when you rinse. And don't worry about that bar of soap sitting there collecting germs - as soon as you rinse it as well, its clean as a whistle. The last thing you want to do is to go around half-killing a bunch of bacteria. It makes them come back even stronger and is how those nasty hospital "superbugs" were born. The bacteria even mutate to be resistant to the antibacterial type of products over time, so just washing those worries down the drain is preferred.

So pick your poison, are you a bar soap or liquid soap kind of person? Either way, you're sure to have the cleanest hands on the block!