Why Add Jojoba Oil to Our Products?
When you’re searching for cleaner swaps for commonly used products, it is generally accepted that the fewer ingredients a product contains, the better. As chronic label-readers ourselves, we’re familiar with the desire to see a short list of recognizable ingredients on the label. After discussing the benefits of grass-fed and finished beef tallow for skincare, you might be wondering why we would add a plant oil, jojoba, into our products. What benefits does jojoba oil bring? Does the use of a plant oil stand in contrast to our goals of supporting regenerative agriculture and fighting against environmentally destructive mono-cropping? Let’s dive into those questions!
Why would we look to enhance our tallow products with a plant oil source, rather than simply using pure tallow? One reason that we sought an oil to blend with our tallow is because pure tallow functionality is limited to its emollient and occlusive effects on the skin (check out last week’s blog for more on this), and the addition of different lipids would create a product that has a broader impact on your skin barrier health.
One argument sometimes levied against the use of tallow for skincare is that while the emollient and occlusive properties of tallow are excellent for providing a temporary barrier, those benefits are not actively improving the skin barrier’s function. They argue that providing a temporary barrier without improving skin barrier health will result in no skin improvement despite long-term tallow use. The point made in this argument is valid, so we made it our goal to formulate products that maximize the benefits of tallow, while also seeking to add high-quality ingredients which would ensure that our formulations promote an improved skin barrier function.
The search for the right plant oil led us to jojoba oil. First, because jojoba oil is not actually an oil (fat) like other plant oils or tallow (an oil is a lipid mixture, and lipid mixtures can be made up of triglycerides, free fatty acids, and other molecules), but rather, jojoba oil is classified as a liquid wax, and is made up of >97% pure wax esters, sterols, vitamins, and triglyceride esters [1]. Secondly, jojoba oil packs a powerful antioxidant punch with a naturally occurring mix of tocopherols (Vitamin E) giving jojoba oil an extremely long shelf life [1]. These tocopherols bring their antioxidant benefits to the final tallow product, adding a naturally occurring preservative property aiding in the longevity of our products’ quality and extending shelf life. Additionally, jojoba oil is anti-inflammatory and helps with both acute and chronic inflammation, is anti-microbial, and has shown anti-acne/anti-psoriasis benefits [1]. Other plant oils are comprised of mostly triglycerides, much like tallow, and therefore do not bring any additional benefits to the formula, but the unique composition of jojoba oil complements the tallow to provide a more broadly beneficial product for your skin.
It was also important for us to investigate whether jojoba oil production is compatible with our goal of supporting regenerative agriculture and sustainable farming methods. The jojoba plant is a perennial bush that is native to the deserts of North and Central America, but now is cultivated in many desert environments across the world, including Chile, Argentina, Egypt, and Israel. Jojoba farms are able to utilize land that is not suitable for growing other crops or raising animals and they require very little water input [2].
This means that growing jojoba can be done on previously unused land with a lower environmental impact, versus clearing forests and destroying natural habitats in order to plant monocrop plantations often utilized in plant oil production for the cosmetic industry. Since jojoba is a perennial, there is no need for annual soil tilling and seed planting which requires large equipment, resulting in less fossil fuel inputs needed compared to other plant oils such as sunflower and safflower. For these reasons, we decided that jojoba oil production does fit into a sustainable agricultural model, and we have chosen to carefully source our organic jojoba oil from HobaCare. HobaCare is owned by a co-operative of jojoba farmers in Israel and they only sell first-press, filtered jojoba oil in order to maintain the highest quality product.
Hopefully this answers any questions you may have had about our decision to include jojoba oil in our tallow products!
Sources:
1. Gad HA, Roberts A, Hamzi SH, Gad HA, Touiss I, Altyar AE, Kensara OA, Ashour ML. Jojoba Oil: An Updated Comprehensive Review on Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Uses, and Toxicity. Polymers (Basel). 2021 May 24;13(11):1711. doi: 10.3390/polym13111711. PMID: 34073772; PMCID: PMC8197201.
2. WF, Abobatta, and M. E. H. Farag. "Impact of the Climate Change on Jojoba Cultivation." (2021).