Vanilla Kokkum Body Butter

A body butter built on kokum butter and scented with vanilla, made by Adivasi women's collectives in central Kerala. Kokum is the interesting ingredient. Pressed from the seed of Garcinia indica, a Western Ghats tree, it is one of the hardest and most stable plant butters available — it stays solid at Indian room temperature where shea and cocoa soften, and it is unusually resistant to going rancid. It also melts cleanly on skin contact and absorbs faster than shea, which makes it a better fit for a humid climate than the imported butters most body products default to. Using a Western Ghats material in a Western Ghats product is coherent rather than incidental. Anhydrous, so no water phase and no preservative required. Assessed on clean-label first principles rather than FSSAI. Unpublished: the full ingredient list, and whether the vanilla is an extract, an absolute, or a synthetic vanillin — the last being the common shortcut given real vanilla's cost.