Let's get nerdy about oils again

Want to get a little bit nerdy with me?

Botanical oils are truly so cool to me and I love that I get to share them with you every session.

Every botanical oil is made up of a chain of fatty acids and unsaponifiables.

🌿Fatty acids are kind of like the molecular building blocks of an oil

🌿Unsaponifiables are the components within an oil that remain intact even if you were to make a soap with them. They make up a small % but include things like vitamins or sterols..

While many oils are made of similar fatty acids it the combination and amount paired with the unsaponifiables that make them each unique.

It tells the story of where they grow and how they might benefit us. Yes, even seed oils. In fact most of our favorite oils come from the seeds of plants. Rosehip seed, cucumber seed, pomegranate seed, raspberry seed, sunflower seed oils are just a few examples. Their chemical makeup isn't all that different from the oils that come from the nuts of a plant. For those that are allergic to tree nuts, the seed oils are almost the only safe options.

In this photo we can look at the fatty acid make up of one of our favorite oils Argan. What's really cool is that it is made up of almost 50% oleic acid with linoleic acid not far behind. This tells us so much about argan. We also know from this page, that argan is high in vitamin E and has squalene, antioxidants, carotenes, and polyphenols.

In contrast cucumber seed oil has 60 to 68% linoleic fatty acid and only 14% oleic fatty acid.

And pomegranate seed oil has 70-76% punicic acid ,which is a fatty acid named for and found almost only within pomegranates.

Each is a puzzle piece of an oil that can tell us what it is and how we might want to use it on our skin or in our diets.

If you look closely on each label for the bottles we have in the studio, you will see that the fatty acid profile is listed. This is a reminder of which oils I may want to add to a blend.