[ Eco Products]
BRING LIFE TO YOUR FORMULATIONS
with baobab oil Botanical oils from Africa, particularly baobab oil, are trending natural ingredients in the cosmetics industry. Although it’s been around for centuries, baobab oil has only recently become a popular beauty ingredient. This article looks at some of the many reasons why.
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aobab oil, with its lengthy history, is produced locally by EcoProducts. Apart from it being a botanical oil with a great story around biodiversity and social development, arguably the biggest benefit of baobab is its many uses. It can be used as a key ingredient in skin and hair care products or it can be used alone in small amounts as a rich and nourishing treatment. Often referred to as the ‘tree of life’, the baobab tree is native to Africa. These trees live for over 1 000 years, which is how they earned their highly-fitting nickname. Part of the appeal of baobab is that the pulp of its fruit – extracted from baobab pods and then transformed into raw powder – has been a favoured ingredient in wellness and beauty treatments for many years. More recently, the beauty industry has turned its attention to the oil, which is extracted from baobab seeds. According to a technical paper entitled ‘Beauty in Baobab: A Pilot Study of the Safety and Efficacy of Adansonia digitata Seed Oil’, authored by Baatile Komane, Ilze Vermaak, Guy Kamatou, Beverley Summers and Alvaro Viljoen, and published in the Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy, about 5% of the seed content
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is oil – with oleic, linoleic and palmitic acids as the major fatty acids. The high content of linoleic and oleic acids is known to soften the skin and restore and moisturise the epidermis. In addition, the fatty acids regenerate epithelial tissues, which makes the seed oil a very good carrier oil that is of value to the cosmetics industry.
Pilot study with promising results As documented in the Komane technical article, baobab oil, liquid paraffin, a market-leading intensive care lotion and a market-leading petroleum jelly were tested in comparison for their effect on TEWL, moisture retention (hydration) and skin barrier function (occlusive) properties. Baobab oil and liquid paraffin exhibited similar skin recovery properties. Baobab oil is well-known for its non-siccative (non-drying) property which renders it a suitable cosmetic oil for the prevention of skin dryness. The small molecular structure of the oil results in rapid absorption while palmitic and oleic acids have been reported to be effective percutaneous absorption enhancers. It was further reported that linoleic acid (36.0% in the test sample) is the most frequently used fatty acid in cosmetic
