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Shea butter is a lipid produced from shea plant seeds. It has a pale white or milky tone and a creamy texture that is simple to apply to your face. The majority of shea butter originates from West African shea plants. We consider many factors when we talk about shea butter shelf life. We are going to discuss everything in this post.

Shea butter is an excellent beauty component for smoothing skin due to its high proportions of fatty acids as well as vitamins. It is also anti-inflammatory and therapeutic. Shea butter can cleanse, tighten, and relax your skin when applied to your body, particularly your face.

shea butter shelf life, shea butter expiration
shea butter shelf life

If you possess dry skin, you are surely aware that shea butter is among the best moisturizers to use. But that’s not the only purpose, you can find shea commonly in the skin as well as hair care items. As a beauty care product, particularly in its purely natural state, it offers several advantages. They range from minimizing the early facial appearance of wrinkles to treating skin disorders such as dermatitis.

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Shea Butter Shelf Life

Unrefined shea butter has an average shelf life of around 24 months (2 years) from the date of manufacturing and packing. This is an approximation of the shelf life, which you can modify by storing and weather. The latter two are really crucial to remember!

Because unprocessed shea butter is 100 percent natural and contains no additives, it is possible that one lot or production will produce a slightly variant shea than the other. Because there are no preservatives in unprocessed shea butter, one might anticipate some variation in their butter occasionally.

Climate control is not always achievable while shea butter is en route from Africa to the United States. And whenever shea butter shipments are en route to the many warehouses that handle online sales. It would be an ideal situation, but it isn’t!

These elements influence how much shea butter could last; nevertheless, keep in mind that 2 years is the typical amount of time you may properly use shea to hydrate and nurture your skin.

How Long Does it Take for Shea Butter to Expire?

Shea butter seems to have a normal shelf life of roughly two years before the shea butter expiration. Shea butter includes a high concentration of fatty acids, which aid to increase homemade shea butter life. It also includes antioxidants including vitamin A, C, as well as E, which act as organic preservation.

Even each of these variables assists to increase the storage lifespan. You must be cautious about how as well as where you keep your shea butter to prevent it from spoiling earlier.

How Can You Tell if Shea Butter Has Gone Bad?

First of all and obviously, if your shea butter smells rotten, it is no longer good. If you’re unfamiliar with Unrefined, Pure Shea Butter, then could mistake its distinctive nutty and smoky aroma for rancidity. We’ll try to elaborate on this and go through the distinction between rotten smell and smoky scent in greater detail:

  1. A Rancid Odor

It causes you to vomit and smacks you of rancid olive oil or rancid bread. Dump your shea butter if it smells rancid. You’d realize it’d be disgusting!

  1. Smoky Odor

This is a charred scent, similar to when you light a grill or firewood. Certain varieties are nuttier/smoky than the others, but Most unprocessed shea has a discernible smoky aroma. If the shea butter feels smokey, it’s the real deal! Unrefined, unadulterated, and set to use!

Shelf Life of Raw Shea Butter

Raw shea butter will often expire 24 months after production. “Refined” shea butter, on the other hand, has a much longer shelf life but loses many of the advantages of raw shea butter. Shea butter will expire significantly faster if it is not stored properly.

How Does Expired Shea Butter Smell?

Shea butter must not stink! On typical occasions, it has a gritty, nutty fragrance that certain people dislike. And it should rarely have a putrid odor. You may notice a distinct rotten aroma based on whether your shea contains additional oils or has been packed on its own.

For instance, if you mix oil to your shea butter, including coconut and otherwise olive. This might odor like stale food. However, if your shea has no extra components, it may feel like old car oil like vinegar when it goes old. In any event, if you come across any shea that smells bad, it’s time to put an end and trash it.

How to Store Shea Butter 

It is critical to preserve shea butter correctly to prevent it from spoiling. You should keep it in a moderate, dry environment. Take care to keep it away from the light and heat. When shea is in direct sunlight for an extended length of time, it begins to oxidize. Some people keep their shea butter in the refrigerator, although that is not necessary. It is sufficient to keep it in a well-packed glassware or plastic bottle away from moisture.

Tips to Prevent Shea Butter from Expiration

Shea butter has a remarkable shelf life amongst organic moisturizing substances owing to the increased concentration of fatty acids as well as antioxidants found in shea butter. It contains vitamins A, C, and E, which function as organic antioxidants.

That is, if you maintain adequate management of shea butter, you will almost never have to fear that it will expire until you consume it.

To assist you to preserve your shea butter from spoiling, I’ve included a few things to bear in mind in aim to maintain your shea butter as fresh as practicable.

1. Before using Shea Butter, wash your hands

It really is a smart option to clean your hands before heading for your shea butter to get rid of any viruses or bugs that may be lurking on your hands.

Washing your hands properly with soap prior can assist to avoid external germs from being retained in shea butter jars, enabling nasty bacteria to grow and leading your butter to spoil.

2. Use dry hands when working with shea butter

Many of us develop the practice of using shea butter and hydrating our skin immediately after showering. Although this is an excellent time to moisturize your skin after removing natural oils using soap or shower gel, it is better to do that with dried hands.

Make sure no water gets into the shea butter bottle, even if it’s only a little jar in your lavatory. We allow germs and mold to start growing on our shea butter when we walk out of the bath and put our moist hands immediately into it.

As much as you dry your hands prior to getting into touch with your preferred moisturizer, you can prevent contaminating it, which might cause it to degrade and expire quickly.

3. Store Shea Butter in Ultraviolet containers

It is advised to purchase shea butter goods in Ultraviolet (UV) glassware jars or bottles that protect the amount of solar radiation.

UV jars assist to keep your preserved shea butter from oxidizing by preventing it from being exposed to direct sunlight for an extended period of time.

This implies that even if you don’t keep your shea butter in a dark spot, you can be confident that sunshine isn’t influencing your shea butter to deteriorate sooner.

3. Store Shea Butter in an airtight bottle

To preserve your shea butter healthier for longer, store it in a sealed jar. When keeping your shea butter in a dry as well as a dark environment, you may considerably speed down the normal oxidative degradation by minimizing the amount of interaction your butter has with air.

4. Shea butter Shelf life must be in glass jars

Though it may be impractical for those of us who need to keep over 300 grams of shea butter at a moment, it is better to prevent disposable containers wherever feasible.

Extreme heat might cause toxins in polymers to leak into your shea butter if you unintentionally expose a plastic shea butter container to it.

I’ve previously noted that warmth can shorten the lifespan of your fat, but any dangerous compounds that find their way to shea butter through plastics can be taken by the skin as well.

These are the recommended glass jars to store shea butter or any other scrubs.

glass bottles

5. Shea Butter should be kept in the refrigerator

If you reside in a city or state where conditions consistently surpass 75°F (28.9°C), you might just want to explore keeping the bulk of the shea butter inside the freezer.

Conditions will frequently change throughout the day and nighttime, and the shea butter would go through a constant melting and hardening cycle.

High temperatures may cause your shea butter to expire sooner, but the frequent heating and chilling will cause the shea butter to acquire an undesirable grainy texture.

6. Purchase high quality shea butter

Shea butter is not all the same. The origin of your shea butter, as well as how it is treated, will have a significant impact on not just the type of shea butter you get, but also how much should last until it expires.

What to do with Expired Shea Butter

If you have passed the shea butter shelf life, then there are many other ways to utilize it. Not specifically shea butter, but any other body butter shelf life. The rotten smell is an indication that it is going bad, and even if it smells awful, it can still be used instead of being thrown away.

  • When this ingredient becomes rancid, one may use the saponification procedure to make soaps from it.
  • The saponification technique divides oil from a product and uses sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to create soap as well as alcohol.
  • Whatever soap you make should not be for mass consumption, but rather for individual use.
  • Another method for repairing this rancid stuff is to reheat it in a saucepan over low heat and cool while stirring.
  • If you store it in the refrigerator or freezer, the putrid scent will give out a pleasant odor.

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