Regarding Cocoa Butter

Over the next week or so, we're going to be removing the cocoa butter from our beard balm ingredients. You may receive a product that lists cocoa butter on the label, and if it's in the next week, it might! But otherwise, it's just us using up our current labels.

When I first formulated my beard balm, I decided that while Shea butter clearly imparted more health benefits than cocoa butter, for the sake of completeness I would use both butters. But I read recently that cocoa butter is becoming scarce. Because the main companies that import it are megacorporations that aren't willing to pay more than pennies per pound, the farmers are making very little money, and are beginning to realize it's not worth it. This, combined with the very specific latitudinal requirements of cocoa trees, means that cocoa is becoming scarcer.

This got me started feeling like I was wasting a dwindling resource, and one that wasn't strictly necessary for my product. While cocoa butter does have some benefits for skin and hair, Shea butter has more. And ultimately, if I were to replace the cocoa content of the balm with more shea butter, it would serve the product and the user (you!), not to mention the world economy, better.

The shea butter I purchase is a bit more expensive than the cocoa butter, but only by a bit. I won't be adjusting prices up or anything, just changing ingredients. And after testing both ways, I haven't seen any functional difference, so you don't have to worry about that, either.

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