Page 23 - Florida Sentinel 3-11-22

Health
Shea Butter comes from the karité (which means “life”) tree in South Africa. It grows naturally in the grasslands of west and central Africa and does not need any special cultivation, nourishment or pesticides.
It takes at least 25
years for a shea tree to
produce large number of
fruit. About the size of a
small avocado, the fruit of
the karite trees are har-
vested and collected, usu-
ally by the women
villagers. The fruit is eaten
and the ‘nuts’ or seed ker-
nals inside are saved for their creamy medicinal shea butter. Shea butter is one of the world’s most sustain- able natural resource, using no chemicals; shea butter is extracted by a century old process to preserve all the beneficial properties.
Today, shea butter is acknowledged all over the world for its nourishing, enriching and toning proper- ties for skin and hair. Unfortunately traditional African shea butter has been divided into refined, processed, industrialized, extra refined, ultra refined and a nu- merous other names. Actually there are only two cate- gories of shea butter, ultra-refined and refined.
Ultra-refined is usually white to cream colored, has no discernible nutty/smoky scent, and is smooth and creamy. Unre- fined or raw shea butter simply means natural, or cold pressed, it means not processed and no chemi- cals. The difficulty with ultra or even refined shea butter is in knowing whether that product has been commercially refined to remove its minerals and vitamins with a hexane solvent.
One way to determine a shea butter’s authentic- ity is to see if it has been cold-pressed, sometimes called cold-processed or expeller-pressed. Refined shea but- ter, which ranges in color from white to beige, is some- times referred to as gently refined, has had some of its vitamin/mineral properties removed in the process of refining, but it does retain a bit of a beige or light tan color and nutty aroma. The texture can be either creamy or chunky. The refining process chemically al- ters shea butter to remove the natural scent and color and ultimately destroys the diverse properties held in
the natural state.
Take a look at 13 of its marvelous benefits!
FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2022 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY PAGE 11-B