Description

1 kg (35 oz) of unrefined raw organic edible shea butter. Our products have not been altered at all and the quality we offer you is the best, so virgin that it can be used in cooking.
This quality shea butter is produced by a widows’ cooperative in Bolgatanga, Northern Ghana.
When you purchase Fair Trade Shea butter, you are enabling the women that process this product to live with dignity and invest in their families, communities and the environment.

Shea butter is an off- white or ivory-colored fat extracted from the nut of the African shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa). Shea butter is a triglyceride (fat) derived mainly from stearic acid and oleic acid. It is widely used in cosmetics as a moisturizer, salve or lotion. Shea butter is edible and is used in food preparation in Africa.

Shea butter’s amazing skin care and healing properties were first harnessed thousands of years ago. The history of shea as a precious commodity can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, where shea butter was and continues to be used to protect the hair and skin against the fierce sun and the hot dry winds of African deserts and savannah.

Shea butter melts at body temperature. Proponents of its use for skin care maintain that it absorbs rapidly into the skin.
Shea butter is mainly used in the cosmetics industry for skin and hair related products (lip gloss, skin moisturizer creams and emulsions, and hair conditioners for dry and brittle hair).
Shea butter is sometimes used as a base for medicinal ointments. Some of the isolated chemical constituents are reported to have anti-inflammatory, emollient and humectant properties. Shea butter has been used as a sunblocking lotion and has a limited capacity to absorb ultraviolet radiation.
In Ghana, shea butter, locally known as nkuto (Akan) or nku (Ga) is applied as lotion to protect the skin during the dry Harmattan season.

The United States Agency for International Development has suggested a classification system for shea butter separating it into five grades: A (raw or unrefined, extracted using water), B (refined), C (highly refined and extracted with solvents such as hexane), D (lowest uncontaminated grade), E (with contaminants). Commercial grades are A, B, C. The color of raw (grade A) butter ranges from cream (like whipped butter) to grayish yellow, and it has a nutty aroma which is removed in the other grades.