Many who have come to an understanding against the ingesting of unclean
animals have neglected to notice that we're slathering our bodies with
the fat of unclean animals on a daily basis. In fact, many of the soaps that we use to "CLEAN"
ourselves are made from "UNCLEAN" animals.
In the context of unclean animals, Leviticus 11 verse 8 reads "...Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch. They are unclean to you."
Yes, that's right, the commandment says that we are not even to TOUCH an unclean carcass. It may sound a little extreme at first, but God knows our bodies better than we do. After all, He made us. Unclean carcasses are not fit for ingestion into our bodies. Given the fact that our skin is porous, much of what we touch with our skin is also getting absorbed into our system.
I was shocked when I realized that many of the products in my bathroom, kitchen,
and closets contained pork. Have you ever had a glass of water and gotten that unpleasant
taste of soap residue that wasn't completely rinsed away? If you're not careful about your
dish detergents, you may have inadvertently ingested pork fat. We often check for unclean
ingredients in our food, but unclean ingredients can also be found in lotions,
soaps, shampoos, deodorants, dish soap, laundry detergent, household cleaners,
and on and on. Remember, God says not to even touch the stuff.The big difficulty
with removing unclean animal ingredients from your home is that many labels are
practically written in a foreign language. After all, it doesn't sound too appealing to tell
your consumers that they're washing their children's hair with a fatty substance taken from the
stomachs of pigs, so, instead, they call it stearic acid. Even if you somehow manage to learn all of
the scientific names of every possible ingredient that could come from an
unclean source, you'll still have difficulties because many of the animal
derived ingredients such as stearic acid and glycerin have vegetarian versions.
For
a while I struggled with cosmetic dictionaries and attempting to carefully
scrutinize the labels of my personal products, but the only real way to be sure
you're not smearing pork fat all over your skin is to contact the companies. You
have to research them BEFORE you go to the store, because when you look at the labels,
most of us are not going to have a clue what the ingredients really are. The whole
process can be quite cumbersome. Thus this list was born. Some of the companies
make the information freely available on their websites, some of the companies I had to
contact, and some of the companies I got from a list on Peta's Caring Consumer
web site. Of course, I'd like to be able to list a lot more companies on here,
but there just isn't the time to contact them all. If you have updated information
or information on other companies that you would like to share, please feel free to
contact me and I will update the list as soon as I can. Obeying God in today's society
can be quite difficult and I am hoping that this list can help make at least one
part of it a little bit easier.
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