What Is In This?

Since my life is complicated enough as it is, trying to decide what is natural only makes me frustrated and drained of energy.  Long ago, there were only a few choices when it came to food and it was easy to make a grocery list - just get flour, milk, eggs, sugar and the butcher would cut the meat you needed or else it came from your own animals.  Vegetables were grown on your own land and meals were simple - a cake was a cake, water was what you drank if you were thirsty. 

Natural was taken for granted - it was not an issue.  In fact, asking someone, “is this a natural soap here?” would have been the cause for a great deal of talk and gossip.   

 Now, a person feels like they are not doing their job if they do not question what is actually in this food we are eating, or this soap we are using, or the lotion we are using.  

Speaking of soap then, the soap sold commercially usually has been made with detergent additives.  They lather, they get you squeaky clean, and they strip your skin of protective oils and good bacteria.  They are not true soap, or pure soap, or even natural soap. 

Not everyone has jumped on this bandwagon, but I think that eventually, everyone will be clamoring to know “what is IN this..?”  Reading labels is a time consuming habit that I have formed.  I do not claim to know what everything is either, or what is in those little wheat crackers my children love, but I sure do know what is in the soap that they are using.  I read the labels because I am supposed to, aren’t I?  And since I am a soapmaker, and I know what real soap is, it has become an issue with me simply because it seems that everything has gotten out of hand as far as what is IN ”it”? 

Will things ever go back to a gentler time and slower paced days?  I do not have an answer for that and we are no smarter now than our grandparents and great grandparents were.  At least they knew what was in the food they were eating as well as their soap.  It would not have occured to them to question ingredients because they did not have to.  And natural was not in their vocabulary - “natural - what’s that?

Soap was soap, not natural soap or even handmade, because everything was already natural and handmade.  Splitting hairs, I say, and this does not make us more educated or knowledgeable, only more confused and bogged down by a contradiction in terms.