Exploring the Ivorian Shea Butter Potentialities: Consumers and Scientists Approach

Traditional shea butter is generally obtained through various uncontrolled methods, leading to a wide variability of quality. Nevertheless, consumers often complain about this fat because of it unconformity with their demands. Indeed, Ivorian ordinary consumers mostly prefer whitish odorless and fondant shea butter. Moreover, traders and industries interest in shea butter as raw material, would reside in its exceptional quality and potentialities of exploitation in several fields. An optimized traditional process was proposed by the present authors not only as a standard method, but also as a response to the whole users’ exigencies. Resulting beige and yellow shea butters present very weak acid and peroxide indexes, very high unsaponifiable matters. Viscosity decreased exponentially with the temperature increasing, when UV-Vis and near infra-red spectra revealed presence of UV-filter compounds, carotenoids, and chlorophyll. Chromatographic profile identified palmitic, stearic, arachidic acids, and essential fatty acids like oleic and linoleic and also exaltolides compounds. Samples also contained essential minerals (Calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, etc.) carotene, vitamins A in relatively important amounts. Moreover, neither microbiological germs nor heavy were detected. All these valorizing characteristics would confer to the optimized shea butters good aptitude for households feeding and body care, and also profile a wide range of exploitation in food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.