Despite their wholesome branding… Companies like Dr. Squatch ($100M/yr) exploit our desire for a healthy life by slapping the “natural” label on products that are anything but.
Soaps loaded with heavily processed ingredients like palm oil and so-called “natural” fragrances. This is not a new scam - this has been going on for over 100 years, ever since Procter & Gamble introduced Crisco, replacing traditional animal fats in soap production with cheaper seed oils to cut costs (more on that soon...).
The Hidden Process Behind Palm Kernel Oil
There’s a reason so many companies use palm oil - and hint: it’s not because it’s good for you.
(It's because it's super cheap.)
Palm oil is a type of vegetable oil that comes from the fruits of certain palm trees, harvested by a nasty deforestation process (The World Wildlife Fund reports that every hour, an area equivalent to 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared in Southeast Asia for palm oil plantations.)
These palms produce two kinds of oil: - Oil from the pulp, typically used in food like chocolate or breakfast cereals, and - Oil from the seed, which is often used in soap and shampoo. The process of extracting oil from the seed is no different than any other harmful seed oil.
- Palm oil is chemically extracted using insanely high heat and solvents like n-hexane, a neurotoxic endocrine disruptor. Machinery used in this process also often contaminates the oil with engine lubricants.
- After extraction, the oil undergoes bleaching and deodorizing. This process uses chemicals that strip away any remaining nutrients and can generate toxic byproducts like 3-MCPD and glycidyl esters, both linked to cancer and harm the reproductive system per the European Food Safety Authority.
What’s left after this heavily industrial process is nothing more than a highly processed fat, much like canola or soybean oil - far from the skin-nourishing ingredient it’s marketed to be
. And the worst part…
Your skin absorbs almost everything you put on it. So if you’re lathering your body in this stuff, you’re essentially giving yourself a dose of all the chemicals mentioned.
Ask yourself: Do you really want inflammatory seed oils sneaking into your bloodstream?
Traditional soap made with tallow (natural animal fats) are minimally processed and rich in skin-friendly fatty acids that nourish and protect your skin.
So why did we stop making soap out of tallow? Enter Big Soap
The Historical Hijacking - How Procter & Gamble Started It All
To understand how seed oils became so prevalent in soap, we need to go back over 100 years... In the early 1900s, businessmen Procter & Gamble were looking for ways to cut costs in soap production. At that time, soaps were primarily made with animal fats like tallow, which were rich in nutrients and beneficial for the skin.
They saw an opportunity in cottonseed oil - a waste product of the cotton industry that, up until then, had been considered almost useless. They started mass producing this and even created a subsidiary of their biz to manage its production.
They worked with chemists to learn how to “hydrogenate” this cheap oil, heavily processing it into a solid fat that allowed them to mass produce soap at a fraction of the cost. And there, in the soap-making lab, became the first industrial seed oil. It was quickly brought to market and also sold to home cooks as a "better" alternative to animal fats as “Crisco”, changing our health forever for the worse.
But here’s where the story turns...
Procter & Gamble didn’t just make this shift for cutting corners - they masterminded a massive marketing campaign to convince the public that their new, ultra-processed cheap product was actually “natural”, and “healthy”...
This marked the beginning of the seed oil revolution - a century-long corporate strategy that prioritized profits over consumers' health. Over the decades, Procter & Gamble's shift toward seed oils in soap paved the way for the entire industry to adopt cheaper, chemically processed oils like palm oil and sunflower oil - all while positioning these seed oils as "cleaner" and more progressive than traditional animal fats.
Big Soap and Big Food worked hand-in-hand to promote seed oils as superior, and this capitalization on the public's lack of ingredient knowledge didn’t end here…
"This may ruin the soap business. But if anybody is going to ruin the soap business, it had better be Procter & Gamble." - William Procter, P&G President (1907–1934)
Fast forward to the 1950s, and things got even worse when Procter & Gamble found another way to cut costs - again, at the expense of your health. Their next “innovation” was the introduction of synthetic detergent soaps (AKA chemical warfare on your skin).
Synthetic detergent soaps - which aren’t even real soaps - became widespread during World War II when Germany was going through a fat shortage, and a chemist there learned how to create powerful chemical "surfactants" that stripped dirt from a surface. He had no commercial application for the invention, but P&G caught wind of it and reverse-engineered it to create a new line of products.
First, this led to the creation of Tide in 1946 - the first heavy-duty synthetic laundry detergent. Filled with petroleum-based surfactants and phosphates, Tide was effective at removing dirt but also introduced harmful chemicals that irritate skin and cause reproductive damage. Then they decided to start putting the laundry detergent in the soap.
P&G’s famous Ivory Soap, introduced in 1879 and once known for being "99.44% pure," was made with tallow and coconut oil. However, in the 1950s they started altering the ingredients, adding Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and other synthetic detergent chemicals that dry your skin and fill your bloodstream with estrogenic chemicals.
The result: Ivory was no longer soap but something closer to a detergent. So now chemical detergents are the mainstream soap, and suddenly anything ‘natural’ sounded like a healthier option - right?
Well, not quite.
Let's dive deeper into the real scam…
The Synthetic Soap Trap: How They Made Us Think We Were Getting "Natural"
Consumers today are left with two main options iwhen walking down the soap aisle: “Natural” (seed oil) soap or synthetic detergents.
At first glance, the natural soaps seem like the obvious choice - they're marketed as "natural," "plant-based," and "healthy." You will see phrases like "No Parabens," "No Harsh Chemicals," and "All-Natural Ingredients" that seem reassuring.
This seems innocent enough…until you flip over the bottle to examine the ingredient list and realize what these companies took from you (traditional animal fat soap) and what they are instead banking on you not recognizing (Sodium Lauryl, Palm Oil, PEG-150, etc.)
These new seed oil-based products - often made from palm or sunflower oil - are highly processed and, in many cases, just as harmful to the skin as their synthetic counterparts.
They are EXPLOITING the fact that the average consumer has:
a.) Low ingredient literacy (Doesn’t know how to interpret ingredient lists or recognize harmful substances)
b.) High trust (If a product is labeled “natural,” they assume it is good for them)
These companies confidently flaunt phrases like "vegetable oil-based" or "all-natural sunflower oil" as if they are healthy, knowing that 90% of consumers don’t know these highly processed oils are inflammatory to the skin, clogging pores and leading to imbalances in the skin’s natural oil production.
But the deception runs deeper than just hidden chemicals…
Companies have spent billions on marketing to create the illusion that their products are pure, clean, and healthy.
The false idea that "natural” is synonymous with “healthy" was no accident: It was a deliberate marketing ploy, designed to keep profits high while selling cheap, processed ingredients.
And we all fell for it because of a little trick called Greenwashing and Weaponizing Bureaucracy
Consider this: Many people still trust that products like Crisco (vegetable oil) are “heart-healthy” simply because the label says so...
But is there a conflict of interest beneath that claim?
In 1948, Procter & Gamble paid $1.7 million (about $22 million today) to the American Heart Association to promote vegetable oils like Crisco as heart-healthy, while demonizing saturated fats like tallow. This substantial contribution helped transform the AHA from a small organization to a national powerhouse while also cementing vegetable oils as the "healthy" choice in the American diet. The AHA's rise in prominence "coincided" with the promotion of vegetable oils as "heart-healthy," which benefited companies like Procter & Gamble.
This alignment provided their products with an aura of medical endorsement that boosted sales and shaped public perception for decades. As a result, Americans’ consumption of vegetable oils skyrocketed, increasing by nearly 90% from 1970 to 2014.
This narrative - that seed oils were the healthier choice - continues to influence both dietary and cosmetic industries today, even as the real health risks of these processed oils remain largely hidden. This is just one example out of thousands. We constantly see attempts to greenwash via appeals to authority through celebrity endorsements and labels with buzzwords like “Organic,” “Natural,” and “Eco-Friendly.”
But these terms often don’t mean what we think they do. Most consumers don’t know how to read a label in detail, and companies exploit this by using vague or unregulated terms like "fragrance" and "plant-based." The personal care industry takes advantage of loopholes in regulatory standards, which are almost non-existent when compared to other industries.
For example, to protect "trade secrets," manufacturers can hide a cocktail of chemicals - many harmful - under the single term "fragrance." Over 3,000 chemicals can be legally concealed under this one word. (Many of these chemicals have been linked to allergies, hormonal disruptions, and other health issues.)
We see this greenwashing particularly often with soaps and shampoos with a “natural” label that not only have the seed oils but are ALSO still loaded with synthetics like sulfates, parabens, and synthetic dyes. If you think this is crazy, you’re not alone.
But don’t despair, you’re not powerless to Big Soap anymore…
What You Can Do About It
I started making my own soaps because I tried dozens of “natural” soaps and shampoos from Etsy and Amazon only to realize they were all scams - loaded with sunflower oil or worse.
The good news is that you don’t have to be a victim of deceptive marketing. Here’s how to make better choices for your skin and health:
- Familiarize yourself with common harmful ingredients such as parabens, phthalates, triclosan, sulfates and synthetic dyes.
- Read labels carefully: Ingredients are listed from highest to lowest concentration.
- Avoid ANYTHING with seed oils like sunflower oil, or even worse, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (you'll be surprised to find that this is in everything: toothpaste, soap, shampoo, etc.).
- Be skeptical of buzzwords and look for vague terms like "fragrance" and steer clear. If a product doesn’t list its ingredients transparently, be wary.
- Choose traditional ingredients like tallow or olive oil, which are far more beneficial for your skin than seed oils.
- Support transparent brands that disclose all of their ingredients and avoid hidden chemicals.
Remember, companies like Procter & Gamble didn’t want you to use animal soaps because they were too expensive to make.
Every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of products you want to see more of in the future. By making informed choices, you not only protect your health but also send a message to the industry that consumers deserve better.
Let's demand better standards and transparency from companies. Together, we can:
- Push back against misleading practices
- Reclaim truly natural soap
- Promote a healthier future for our families
and END the century-old seed oil scam once and for all.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.