If you Can’t Eat it or Pronounce it then Don’t take it Home!

When was the last time you had a look at the ingredients on your skin care, cosmetics, shampoo even tooth paste? Could you pronounce the names of the ingredients? More importantly would you eat them?

I have been a keen consumer of natural and organic products for some time like most of us, however, I can get a bit slack sometimes. Recently I gained some real insight into what is in the standard shampoo, skincare and cosmetic lines and how those ingredients impact on our health and the health of our environment. At the bottom of this article I have included a list of ingredients you will not want to be putting in or on your body. It has certainly helped me re-focus on what’s in the things I buy for my family and I to eat and put on our skin.

Have you ever bought a product because it said ‘Natural’ or ‘Organic’ on the label? You could reasonably expect that Natural meant safe, edible, food grade – is this, however, the definition used by skin care and cosmetic companies? I was fascinated to find that the beauty industry definition of natural’ means that the ingredient may have started out as a natural ingredient, like coconut oil, for example. After being processed, heated, chemically treated, it no longer resembles the natural product is started out as – it’s also no longer healthy, safe or food grade and it is definitely not edible. Yet the product is labeled as natural. How horrifying to think we buy these products and think we’re doing ourselves a favor.

There are also products that claim to be organic, but do they have the organic symbol on the packaging confirming that they are in fact certified as organic? Most times I have found they do not which means they are not certified organic and have not been quality controlled at all. Certified organic means that there is a minimum of 95% certified organic ingredients excluding water. Pesticides are not used in farming the ingredients and there are no genetically modified or synthetic ingredients present either. Certainly, nothing on our list below of things to be avoided – so unless a product has been certified organic you cannot be sure it is in fact safe to consume or put on your body or in your environment

The following preservatives release formaldehyde, yes that’s right the stuff they use to preserve dead flesh: Sodium hydroxymethylglycinate (Suttocide)