What do men smell of?

The Little Satsuma soaps arrived, two from the Orangutan Foundation and also I ordered a sample pack of various different scented ones directly. I got some deoderant, lip balm and moisturisers from them as well. I'm using up my current supplies of moisturiser etc. at the moment but we have given the Apeing around apple soap a go over the last couple of days.

It smells divine and is really nice and creamy; I really like it. It's too soon to say whether, together with moisturiser it will keep my eczma at bay. I'm not using the moisturiser that I bought yet as I want to finish my Oil of Olay first. Plus just in case I have a reaction to a new moisturiser, I would prefer it to be early next week as I obviously have to meet my public on Saturday on my market stall.

When I asked DH (darling husband) what he thought about the apple soap, he wasn't that keen on scented soaps. In the past few months, we have been using Dove soap (unscented uses palm oil), Simple Soap (unscented, not sure on palm oil as I don't have a wrapper at the moment) and more recently Tesco Pure (unscented, definitely uses palm oil). I asked him what the problem was with the scent and he said he'd prefer to smell like a man ... which led me to ask what a man smells like? He didn't have a ready answer for that (most unlike him!) When I offered the hypothesis that maybe it was flatulence and beer, we had quite a laugh!

I have pointed out that I also have Oatmeal and Shea & Simple soaps in my sample pack which sound scent neutral so he can have those.

Yesterday's half hour was spent replying to Tesco about how labelling of products and identification of palm oil in the plethora of ingredients that are derived from palm oil or have traces in it. I asked how palm oil products are labelled on their own brand goods.

I also put forward the suggestion to Tesco that maybe they could work with the WWF as they're doing a lot of research on their palm oil scorecard. Perhaps my idea of on an on-line database that consumers could consult indicating whether palm oil is present could be incorporated into the WWF project. Tesco provide the baseline data via their on-line database of products as well as resources in keeping it up to date and they could have a bit of a coup on their PR/marketing front in return. I suggested that such a database might also be expanded to address allergy concerns that other consumers have such as containing nuts, aspartame etc. I like to be constructive rather than "bad bad supermarket" finger-waggling. I'll be interested in how they respond.

I wrote to Tiptree products a while ago, they make marmalade, jam, chutney, bar-b-q sauce, some of their products are in my cupboard/fridge and so I wanted to know (as this is a typically palm oil containing product-line) what their policy on palm oil was. I got this very clear response: "With the exception of mincemeat and Christmas puddings, all Tiptree products are free from palm oil or any derivative thereof. I hope this helps".
So that's excellent news, I imagine the minemeat and Christmas puddings have processed vine fruit in, which, as I know from previous enquiries, has palm oil sprayed on it at source to stop it clumping together in transit.

As you can see from above, I'm beginningto expand my enquiries into lunch things and I do like chutney with cheese sandwiches. Got to get onto bread next (which is going to be one of the biggest challenges, methinks).