Do it yourself: Lip balm recipe

What could be better than protecting your lips from the winter’s chill by slathering on chocolate? Not much, and I bet if you went to the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep website and checked out what’s lurking in lipstick (lead, yikes!), you’d ditch the lipstick and opt for healthy, homemade Cocoa Lip Balm. At Care2, we’ve posted about all that nastiness here and here.

Why Cocoa?

The cocoa bean is used to make chocolate. It’s made from roasted, husked, and ground seeds of the cacao bean, theobroma cacao, from which much of the fat has been removed. Cocoa contains large amounts of antioxidants.
According to Your Daily Thread:

Cocoa contains large amounts of antioxidants. According to research at Cornell, cocoa powder has nearly twice the antioxidants of red wine, and up to three times those found in green tea. Our super friend also contains magnesium, iron, chromium, vitamin C, zinc and more.

Antioxidants that protects the body from aging, vitamins and minerals for overall health and … chocolate. Sign me up. In fact, my husband so sweetly made this lip balm for everyone on his holiday list after he read this. It was a huge hit!
Try this recipe for healthy lip Balm that will make you smacking your lips for more.

DIY Cocoa Lip Balm

What you need:

1 teaspoon beeswax

2 teaspoons pure Fair Trade organic cocoa butter

3 teaspoons organic coconut or olive oil

5-10 drops peppermint essential oil

Recycled containers

What to do:

Slowly melt ingredients in a double boiler or in 30-second spurts in microwave. Cool slightly and fill recycled containers. You may need to adjust the ratio of ingredients to suit your liking. Yum!