AO vs VO

3.5 US Gallons of Shea Butter

VO (vegetable oil) or AO (animal oil)?  This is the question.  And a complicated one too.

Did you know you can make soap out of raccoon and bear fat?  Not that I ever would, but I've heard it can be done.  And, did you know the qualities of soap made of bear tallow are actually listed on the Soapcalc website?   Who figures this stuff out? 

And where does one get raccoon fat?  Or rabbit fat?  Or ostrich oil?  I must have somehow overlooked the wild animal fat section down at the grocery store. 

We've made soap once that had lard in it.  Great soap, but we just decided after that to only use vegetable based oils in all our soap.  It just seems nicer.

But there are also drawbacks to using vegetable oils.  Take, for example, deforestation of natural hardwood forests in tropical climates to make room for palm groves.  Uncool. 

Why does everything need to be so complicated?  Sometimes, I long for the days when I was just a kid and life was simple for my brothers and me.  We didn't think about deforestation or animal rights issues.  We didn't care about whether our soap was made of VO or AO – or even a bunch of harsh chemicals for that matter.  Heck, we hardly used soap at all, except on Saturday nights when our mom made us come in the house for a bath. 

Then I discovered girls. 

It turns out girls don’t like a boy, who, for six days of the week, stinks like a raccoon.  Once girls came into the picture, I had to start showering every day.  What a pain.

And so on and so forth until now I'm all worried about where my soap oils come from. 

Girls did this.