Not All Potato Soap Is Created Equal

You may have seen soap brands claiming their bars deliver vitamins B & C, minerals, carotenoids, and flavonoids to your skin — all thanks to potato water. It sounds impressive. But let's be honest about what's actually in the bottle and what Health Canada says about those kinds of claims.

What Is Potato Water, Really?

Potato water is the liquid left over after boiling potatoes. The potatoes are cooked until they're completely spent — the maker even admits they can't eat them afterwards. What remains in the water? Trace amounts of starch and a fraction of the original nutrients, most of which are destroyed or leached out by prolonged heat.

Calling this "potato soap" is a stretch. It's essentially flavoured water with a marketing story attached.

The Claims Being Made

One brand, By the Sea Soap Shoppe, states that when you use their soap you "receive the benefits of B and C vitamins, various minerals, as well as important carotenoids and flavonoids" — describing it as "outer nutrition for your skin."

These are bold claims. And they're not compliant with Health Canada's cosmetic regulations.

Why These Claims Are Non-Compliant

Under Health Canada's Cosmetic Regulations, a product is classified as a cosmetic if it is used to cleanse, beautify, or alter appearance. The moment a product claims to deliver biological effects — like nutrient absorption or therapeutic skin benefits — it crosses into drug territory, which requires a completely different level of evidence, testing, and licensing.

Soap is a rinse-off product. It is on your skin for seconds before being washed away. The idea that vitamins and flavonoids are meaningfully absorbed through a rinse-off bar is not supported by science — and claiming otherwise misleads consumers.

What We Do Differently — And Why We're Honest About It

At Welcome to Natural, we use potato juice — cold-pressed from fresh potatoes, not the depleted liquid left after boiling them to nothing. That's a meaningful difference in starting material.

But here's where we part ways with the marketing fluff entirely: we don't claim our soap delivers vitamins to your skin either. The saponification process — the chemical reaction that turns oils and lye into soap — generates significant heat. That heat destroys vitamins. What may survive in trace amounts are some minerals and starch, but we won't overstate that.

What potato juice does bring to our soap are other valuable properties — things like a creamier lather, a gentler feel on skin, and characteristics that come from the natural compounds present in fresh juice. These are real, observable benefits that don't require misleading claims to stand behind.

We'd rather tell you the truth about what's in your soap than sell you a story that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

What to Look For as a Consumer

When a soap brand makes claims about vitamins being "absorbed" or nutrients being "delivered" through their bar, ask yourself:

• Is this a rinse-off product?
• Has the ingredient been processed in a way that destroys the nutrients being claimed?
• Are these claims backed by evidence, or just good copywriting?

You deserve honest answers — not marketing fluff dressed up in scientific language.